Category: History

WOMEN PIONEERS OF EMPIRICAL AESTHETICS (2): Margaret Floy Washburn

.Reading time 11 minutes.

Margaret Floy Washburn (1871-1939) graduated at Vassar College. She was interested in both science and philosophy, so she decided to study psychology after graduating. She learnt that James McKeen Cattell had established a new laboratory of psychology and Columbia University, and she determined to study with him (Washburn, 1932). At that time, Columbia did not admit […]

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150 years since the first experiment in empirical aesthetics

.Reading time 15 minutes.

The Madonna des Bürgermeisters Jacob Meyer zum Hasen, painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1526, sold for about $75 million on July 12, 2011, becoming Germany’s most expensive artwork at the time (Gropp, 2011). Not only is it regarded among the greatest German Renaissance paintings, the Madonna sparked one of the fiercest and most consequential controversies in art […]

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Women pioneers of Empirical Aesthetics (1): Lillien Jane Martin

.Reading time 6 minutes.

Lillien Jane Martin (1851-1943) graduated from Vassar in 1880. She taught botany, physics, and chemistry at high schools in Indianapolis and later San Francisco. She was 43 when she resigned her position and decided to pursue psychology, a lifelong interest of hers (Fenton, 1943). She went to Göttingen in 1894, and spent four years there, even […]

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