Karl Clausberg. Zwischen den Sternen: Lichtbildarchive: Was Einstein und Uexküll, Benjamin und dasKino der Astronomie des 19. Jahrhunderts verdanken .Zwischen den Sternen: Lichtbildarchive: Was Einstein und Uexküll, Benjamin und das Kino derAstronomie des 19. Jahrhunderts verdanken by Karl ClausbergReview by: By Gabriel FinkelsteinIsis, Vol. 100, No. 1 (March 2009), p. 171Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/599671 .

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be forgotten to answer these questions?” (p. 222).These are good, if stratospheric questions, but onesthat Burnett’s analysis of Maurice v. Judd cannotanswer and that divert the reader from his greatestaccomplishment: the creation of a new map of thewhale in American culture, one textured by closereadings and breadth of scale, engraved with loveand a sense of wit.

MICHAEL ROBINSON

Karl Clausberg. Zwischen den Sternen: Licht-bildarchive: Was Einstein und Uexkull, Ben-jamin und das Kino der Astronomie des 19.Jahrhunderts verdanken. x � 270 pp., illus.,figs., apps., bibl., indexes. Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 2006. €49.80 (cloth).

Clemenceau said, “War is too serious a matter toentrust to military men.” The same cannot be saidfor the history of science. Scholars from neighbor-ing fields are increasingly adopting the interests, ifnot the practices, of our discipline. Such is the casewith Karl Clausberg, a retired professor of arthistory who has written a study of an essay byFelix Eberty, a popular nineteenth-century writerbest known for suggesting concepts of relativity toEinstein. In addition to recounting the history ofEberty’s ideas, Clausberg’s book reproduces Ger-man and English versions of Eberty’s essay DieGestirne und die Weltgeschichte: Gedanken uberRaum, Zeit und Ewigkeit [The Stars and the Earth;or, Thoughts upon Space, Time, and Eternity],originally published in 1846 and now quite rare.

Eberty’s text begins with F. G. W. von Struveand F. W. Bessel’s measurement of astronomi-cal distance from stellar parallax, which showedthat light from stars arrives out of the deep past.Eberty asks his readers to imagine observersfrom distant stars looking at us: depending onhow far away they are, they see images from ourown past. If these observers travel toward us,they will speed up these images, and if theytravel away, they will slow them down—muchas time-lapse and slow-motion cinematographycan speed up and slow down our own perceptionon earth. Beams of light traveling through spacein this way therefore serve as a cosmic record ofhistory. With a fast enough spaceship, the entirearchive might be examined.

In the second part of his essay Eberty trans-fers the notion of relativity from time to space.Drawing on a tradition that dates to Leibniz,rather than Newton, he argues for the subjectiv-ity of measure: we have no way of telling, forexample, if dimensions suddenly halve. The uni-verse could shrink to a point without our everknowing it.

Clausberg tracks these arguments across thelandscape of popular science, most notably tobooks by Camille Flammarion, a prolific Frenchastronomer, and to performances at the Urania, afamous German theater. He is less successful attracing paths to Henri Bergson and Walter Ben-jamin, with whom Eberty shares certain affini-ties of thought, as well as to Ludwig Klages andErnst Cassirer, whom Clausberg claims as hissuccessors. Most disappointing is Clausberg’sfailure to develop any connection to Einsteinbeyond a brief mention at the start of the book.

Clausberg’s presentation resembles his subject.People and ideas flash by, but few lines of influ-ence are actually drawn. Effectively, he has pro-duced less a history of cinematic ideas than acinema of historical ideas. The choice probablystems from his training. The history of art is es-sentially the history of taste, a subject difficult torelate in any form other than a chronicle. Thehistory of science, on the other hand, offers a muchclearer story. Whether understood as a shift ofparadigms, an accumulation of techniques, or anetwork of interests, science permits historical ex-position that is grounded in evidence, coherent inargument, and compelling in narrative. One doesnot simply have to call for the next slide.

GABRIEL FINKELSTEIN

Andrew Ede. The Rise and Decline of ColloidScience in North America, 1900–1935: The Ne-glected Dimension. (Science, Technology, andCulture, 1700–1945.) xi � 208 pp., figs., table,apps., bibl., index. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate,2007. $99.95 (cloth).

Colloid chemistry is now regarded as a veryboring sector of physical chemistry, largely ofuse only in industry, but in 1920s America itwas considered by its enthusiasts to be the sci-ence of the future. Colloid chemistry grew froma relatively modest founding in mid-nineteenth-century London by the Scottish chemist ThomasGraham—who, like Isaac Newton, becameMaster of the (Royal) Mint; by the 1920s itsramifications were enormous, ranging from theglue industry through the new plastics industryand medicine to the study of the mechanism oflife itself. But colloid chemistry was not simplyan important branch of chemistry; its leadingenthusiasts argued that it was an entirely newway of looking at chemistry and one of greaterrelevance to everyday life than classical chem-istry, with its obsessions with chemical formu-las. Buttressed by the latest, the largest, and,usually, the most expensive instruments, colloidchemistry was being advanced by the leading

BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 100 : 1 (2009) 171

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