Understandings of Colors: Varieties of Theories in the Color Worlds of the Early Seventeenth Century

In the early seventeenth century, there existed a myriad of theories to account for color phenomena. The status, goal, and content of such accounts differed as well as the range of phenomena they explained. Starting with the journal of Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637), this essay inquires into the features and functions of conceptual reflections upon color experiences. Beeckman played a crucial role in the intellectual development of René Descartes (1596–1650), while at the same time their ideas differed crucially. Early corpuscular conceptions of colors cannot be reduced to the mechanistic variety of Descartes. Moreover, the optical rather than corpuscular features of Descartes’s understanding of colors were essential. A stratification of conceptualizations is proposed that is grounded in various problem contexts rather than philosophical doctrines, thus opening a way to interpret the philosophical parts of color worlds in a more diverse way

Stevin, Huygens and the Dutch Republic

Mathematics played its role in the rise of the Dutch Republic. Simon Stevin and Christiaan Huygens were key figures in this. Though from very different backgrounds, both gave shape to Dutch culture. Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, who recently received an NWO-vidi grant for his research on the history of mathematics, discusses their influence on mathematics and its historical significance

Bend it like Beckham: embodying the motor skills of famous athletes.

Observing an action activates the same representations as does the actual performance of the action. Here we show for the first time that the action system can also be activated in the complete absence of action perception. When the participants had to identify the faces of famous athletes, the responses were influenced by their similarity to the motor skills of the athletes. Thus, the motor skills of the viewed athletes were retrieved automatically during person identification and had a direct influence on the action system of the observer. However, our results also indicated that motor behaviours that are implicit characteristics of other people are represented differently from when actions are directly observed. That is, unlike the facilitatory effects reported when actions were seen, the embodiment of the motor behaviour that is not concurrently perceived gave rise to contrast effects where responses similar to the behaviour of the athletes were inhibited