This catalog is based on the exhibit, "Aspects of Art and Science," held at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of History and Technology and MIT's Compton Gallery in the summer and fall of 1978. It illustrates and discusses 72 objects and rare books from museums and private collections in the United States and Great Britain. These include art masterpieces, workaday objects, pieces associated with major scientific figures and long-extinct cultures—all manifesting the themes of Cyril Stanley Smith's research into the relationships among art, science, and technology. Smith, a distinguished metallurgist and historian of technology, now professor emeritus at MIT, has argued persuasively that time and again, the artist and artisan have discovered and exploited subtle properties of matter prior to their use in "serious" technology and long before they attracted scientific attention. Students of science and technology, art historians, and interested readers will enjoy the lavish illustrations, many in full color, of beautiful and historically significant vases, swords, beads, medallions, stamps, illuminated manuscripts, crystals, and much more. In addition, the text provides a store of information showing how the decorative arts, especially ceramics and metals, have contributed to scientists' understanding of the structure and properties of matter.

From Art to Science: Seventy-Two Objects Illustrating the Nature of Discovery

Smith, Cyril Stanley

Science & Math

The MIT Press

Collection of essays written by Cyril Smith that trace the evolution of his ideas pertaining to the common patterns of hierarchical order shared by technology, science, art, and history. For the author, the transformation of metals from one state to another, or the contrasts at one level that merge though repetition into uniformity at a higher level, carries solid metaphorical implications for the human condition.

A Search for Structure

Mathematics

Mit Pr

"As an old admirer of Cyril Smith, I'm delighted to learn that a collection of his essays on the arts will be published. They are a unique body of work which only he could have produced." —Meyer Schapiro Science, art, and history all share common or analogous patterns of hierarchical order that are embedded into the structure of the material world as well. This is a central insight of these essays by a generalist who has also spent a lifetime working in his specialty, the nature of materials. To Cyril Stanley Smith, the transformation of metals from one state to another, or the contrasts at one level that merge through repetition into uniformity at a higher level, carries solid metaphorical implications for the human condition. Cyril Stanley Smith's own expansion of outlook to encompass successively technology, science, history, and art is loosely implicit in the chronological ordering of the fourteen essays included in this volume and explicitly developed in one of them that "comes as close to an autobiography as I am ever likely to write" and traces the evolution of Smith's ideas on science and art. Trained as an industrial metallurgist, Smith turned to the purely scientific study of the structure of metals and alloys after his experience at Los Alamos during World War II, drawn in part by his delight in the intrinsic beauty of these structural manifestations of symmetry and natural design. A growing interest in the history of the science and technology of materials led him to consult the artifactual evidence—the art objects in museums that either greatly predate written historical records or provide, through scientific examination, more reliable information than do the surviving documents of their period. This direct contact with fine or formal art only reinforced Smith's intuition that the aesthetic impulse is at play over the full range of human activity, whether it leads to the making of a bronze sculpture, a scientific theory, or a social reorganization. A variety of investigations of art objects is cited in the text, and the author regards the accompanying illustrations to be as important as the text. In particular, the essays make the case that historically many advances and discoveries regarding metals and ceramics came about through aesthetic curiosity and the desire to improve works of fine and decorative art, rather than through scientific investigation or in response to the need for products having practical utility. Many techniques and even whole industries, Smith writes, began with the making and reproduction of art works. Other essays deal with the emerging understanding of the remarkable properties of steel, the positive uses of corrosion, ancient casting and molding techniques, and the connection between attempts to reproduce oriental porcelain in Europe and modern geological ideas. Still others are more philosophical in approach.

A Search for Structure: Selected Essays on Science, Art, and History

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Complete edited description of this early manuscript devoted to the crafts, pigments, color and colored metals.

Mappae Clavicula: A Little Key to the World of Medieval Techniques Transactions, American Philosophical Society (vol. 64, part 4) (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society)

History

Hawthorne, John G.

Europe

The American Philosophical Society Press

"BERGBUCHLEIN, The Little Book On Ores" is an English translation of the first mining text printed, published between 1505 and 1518 in Germany. This historic text with its original woodcut illustrations and references to alchemy and astrology is a charming account of the early views on mining, metallurgy, and ore origination.

Bergbuchlein, The Little Book on Ores: The First Mining Book Ever Printed

Ross, Mary

Sisco, Anneliese Grunhaldt

Von Kalbe, Ulrich

Oxshott Press

BERGBUCHLEIN, The Little Book on Ores was published before 1518 and was the first book on mining ever printed. With references to alchemy and astronomy this English translation of the German text includes the full text and original woodcut illustrations. BERGBUCLIEN pre-dates DE RE METALLICA by four decades and sections of BERGBUCHLEIN were used by Georgius Agricola in his landmark text. Republished every century since its origination in the 1500s, with this edition BERGBUCHLEIN is once again available to audiences interested in the historical views of mining and ore formation.

BERGBUCHLEIN, The Little Book on Ores: The First Mining Book Ever Printed

Ross, Dr. Mary

A History Of Metallography: The Development Of Ideas On The Structure Of Metals Before 1890

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Literary Licensing, LLC

Cyril Smith's study of the structure of metals and alloys and the properties that result from their processing remains, after more than two decades, a foundational work on the history of metallography. It starts from the intuitive knowledge of metals achieved by such early artists and craftsmen as Biringuccio, Descartes, Réaumur, Bréant, Osmond, Sorby, Brinell, Tschernoff, Howe, Percy and others, and then describes the evolution of the modern scientific understanding of materials. Throughout, the author emphasizes the interplay of contributions from practical engineering, from experimental and theoretical science, and from the workings of the aesthetic imagination.Cyril Stanley Smith is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, and author of A Search for Structure: Selected Essays on Science, Art, and History (MIT Press paperback). The original hardcover edition of A History of Metallography won the Pfizer Prize of the History of Science Society.

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