Reluctant technocrats: Science promotion in the neglect-of-science debate of 1916-1918

History of Science

Volumn 43, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 139-159

  Mayer, Anna K ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 19844376948     PISSN: 00732753     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/007327530504300203     Document Type: Review

References (198)

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6. For Bacon's status as an ancestor of technocratic ideology, note e.g. Frank Fischer, Technocracy and the politics of expertise (Newbury Park, CA, 1990), 66-67;
7. Howard P. Segal, Technological utopianism in American culture (Chicago and London, 1985);
8. Caroline Merchant, The death of nature (New York, 1980), 172, 180-1;
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13. idem, Warfare state: Militarism, technocracy and expertise in twentiethcentury Britain (forthcoming).
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16. Barry Barnes and Stephen Shapin, "Head and hand: Rhetorical resources in British pedagogical writing, 1770-1850", Oxford review of education, ii (1976), 231-54;
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25. idem, "Fifty years on", School science review, xxxii (1950-51), 140-5;
26. David Layton, Interpreters of science: A history of the Association of Science Education (London, 1984).
27. For context in the history of English pedagogy, see W. D. Dean, "H. A. L. Fisher, reconstruction and the development of the 1918 Education Act", British journal of educational studies, xviii (1970), 259-76;
28. E. W. Jenkins, From Armstrong to Nuffield: Studies in twentieth-century science education in England and Wales (London, 1979);
29. David Layton, "Education in industrialized societies", in T. E. Williams (ed.), A history of technology, iv/1 (Oxford, 1978), 138-71;
30. idem, "The schooling of science in England", in Roy Macleod and Peter Collins (eds), The parliament of science: The BAAS 1831-1981 (Northwood, 1981), 188-210;
31. Geoffrey Sherington, English education, social change, and the war 1911-1920 (Manchester, 1981).
32. Stefan Collini, "The idea of 'character' in Victorian political thought", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., xxxv (1985), 29-50;
33. idem, Public moralists: Political thought and intellectual life in Britain (Oxford, 1991);
34. idem, Donald Winch and John Burrow, That noble science of politics: A study in nineteenth-century intellectual history (Cambridge, 1983), 151-9, 170-4,185-205,317-29;
35. John Burrow, A liberal descent: Victorian historians and the English past (Cambridge, 1981).
36. On how such themes came to be adapted by biological humanists in the interwar era, see Roger Smith, "Biology and values in interwar Britain: C. S. Sherrington, Julian Huxley and the vision of progress", Past and present, clxxviii (2003), 210-42.
37. H. A. L. Fisher, Educational reform: An address delivered in the Whitworth Hall of the University of Manchester on 26 September, 1917, to the Associated Educational Societies (Manchester, 1917), 1;
38. William Temple, presidential address to the education section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Times educational supplement, 7 September 1916, 113.
39. William Brock, H. E. Armstrong and the teaching of science, 1880-1930 (London, 1973);
40. Richard Selleck, The new education 1870-1914 (London, 1968);
41. Graeme Gooday, "'Nature' in the laboratory: Domestication and discipline with the microscope in Victorian life science", The British journal for the history of science, xxiv (1991), 307-41.
42. Turner, op. cit. (ref. 4), 595.
43. Turner, op. cit. (ref. 4);
44. Andrew Hull, "War of words: The public science of the British scientific community and the origins of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, 1914-16", The British journal for the history of science, xxxii ( 1999), 461 -81;
45. Michael Heffernan, "Professor Penck's bluff: Geography, espionage and hysteria in World War I", Scottish geographical journal, cxvi (2000), 267-82;
46. Joseph Lester, E, Ray Lankester and the making of modern British biology, ed. with additional material by Peter Bowler (Stanford in the Vale, 1995), 153-9;
47. Harry Armytage, Sir Richard Gregory: His life and work (London, 1957);
48. Peter Alter, The reluctant patron: Science and the state in Britain, 1850-1920, transi, by A. Davies (Oxford and New York, 1987);
49. Richard Gregory, Discovery, or the spirit and service of science (London, 1916).
50. For Lankester, see also his letter to the editor, Times, 14 January 1916, 9.
51. On connexions between scientific research and imperial ambitions, note also Simon Schaffer, "Empires of physics", in Richard Staley (ed.), The physics of empire (Cambridge, 1994), 87-109.
52. Percy Gardner, letter to the editor, Times educational supplement, 4 April 1916,49;
53. T. E. Page, letter to the editor, Times, 4 February 1916, 7
54. (reprinted in Times educational supplement, 7 March 1916,29);
55. Ernest Weekley, Surnames (London, 1916), 22-23.
56. On the conservative humanism in which some of these pronouncements were rooted, see Frank Turner, The Greek heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT, 1981), 17-61.
57. Richard Livingstone, A defence of classical education (London, 1916), 28.
58. Ibid., 52-54;
59. note also Stefan Collini, '"On highest authority': The literary critic and other aviators in early twentieth-century Britain", in Dorothy Ross (éd.), Modernist impulses in the human sciences 1870-1930 (Baltimore and London, 1994), 152-70.
60. For the ancient theme of potential frictions between knowledge and goodness, see John Hope Mason, "The character of creativity: Two traditions", History of European ideas, ix (1988), 697-715;
61. also David Hollinger, "Justification by verification: The scientific challenge to the moral authority of Christianity in modern America", in Michael J. Lacey (ed.), Religion and twentieth-century American intellectual life (Cambridge, 1989), 116-35, pp. 121-2.
62. For a range of interpretations of how knowledge can be literally embodied, see Christopher Lawrence and Steven Shapin (eds), Science incarnate: Historical embodiments of natural knowledge (Chicago, 1998);
63. Smith, op. cit. (ref. 7);
64. idem, "The embodiment of value: C. S. Sherrington and the cultivation of science", The British journal for the history of science, xxxiii (2000), 283-311.
65. For a contemporary reminder that true education awakened affection for great ideals of conduct, see R. S. Conway, "Education and British ideals", Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1915 (London, 1916), 745.
66. George Sampson, English for the English (Cambridge, 1921);
67. Chris Baldick, The social mission of English criticism, 1848-1932 (Oxford, 1983), 87-89, 200;
68. Francis Mulhern, The moment of Scrutiny (London, 1979);
69. Basil Willey, The 'Q'tradition: An inaugural lecture (Cambridge, 1946), 10.
70. Jay Winter, "British national identity and the First World War", in S. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting (eds), The boundaries of the state in modern Britain (Cambridge, 1996), 261-77, p. 266.
71. Edward Schäfer, letter to the editor, Times educational supplement, 7 March 1916, 30;
72. Livingstone, op, cit. (ref. 13), 27 et passim; [An Englishman],
73. "The training of judgment", Times educational supplement, 4 April 1916, 48;
74. Weekley, op. cit. (ref. 12), 22-23;
75. Gardner, op. cit. (ref. 12) (my emphasis).
76. Stuart Wallace, War and the image of Germany: British academics 1914-1918 (Edinburgh, 1988), 38-39;
77. Baldick, op. cit. (ref. 16), 87-92, 106ff;
78. Christopher Parker, The English historical tradition since 1850 (Edinburgh, 1990), 152ff.
79. Gilbert Murray, "German 'Kultur', III - German scholarship", Quarterly review, ccxxiii (1915), 330-9;
80. Denis Brogan, review of A. D. Ritchie, Science and politics (London, 1947),
81. Nature, 3 January 1948,6-7;
82. Ezra Pound, "Provincialism the enemy", New age, 12 July 1917,
83. reprinted in idem. Selected prose: 1909-1965 (London, 1973), 159-60;
84. Michael Sadler, "The strengths and weaknesses of German education", in William Paterson (ed.), German culture: The contribution of the Germans to knowledge, literature, art and life (London, 1915), 301-14, p. 301.
85. Note also Albert Frederick Pollard, "History and science: A rejoinder", History, i (1916), 25-39.
86. Richard Yeo, "Scientific method and the image of science, 1831-1890", in Macleod and Collins (eds), op. cit. (ref. 6), 65-88;
87. idem, "Scientific method and the rhetoric of science in Britain, 1830-1917", in idem and John Schuster (eds), The politics and rhetoric of scientific method: Historical studies (Dordrecht, Boston and Lancaster, 1986), 259-97;
88. T. W. Heyck, The transformation of intellectual life in Victorian England (London, 1982), chap. 4;
89. White, op. cit. (ref. 3);
90. Hollinger, op. cit. (ref. 15).
91. Specifically on Whewell, see Richard Yeo, "William Whewell on the history of science", Metascience, v (1987), 25-40;
92. Perry Williams, "Passing on the torch: Whewell's philosophy and the principles of English education", in Menachem Fisch and Simon Schaffer (eds), William Whewell: A composite portrait (Oxford, 1991), 117-47.
93. Beatrice Webb, My apprenticeship (London, 1926), 131.
94. Henry Armstrong, The teaching of scientific method and other papers on education (London, 1910), 236, 241, 255;
95. see also Armstrong at the Newcastle meeting of the BAAS, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1889 (London, 1890), 229.
96. Brock, op. cit. (ref. 9), 6, 21;
97. Selleck, op. cit. (ref. 9), 26, 45-46, 126f, 147;
98. S. A. Rippa, Education in a free society, 5th edn (New York and London, 1984), 221.
99. For a discussion of holistic models of pedagogy see Selleck, op. cit. (ref. 9), 210ff;
100. Jenkins, op. cit. (ref. 6), 46-47, 64-65;
101. Brock, op. cit. (ref. 9);
102. Anon., Report of the conference on new ideals in education, Stratford upon Avon, 14-21 August 1915 ([London, 1916]).
103. Note also H. B. Dunkel, Herbart and Herbartianism: An educational ghost story (Chicago and London, 1970).
104. Charles Spearman, The abilities of man: Their nature and measurement (London, 1927), 38f;
105. similarly, Dorothy M. Turner, History of science teaching in England (London, 1927), 189.
106. Selleck, op. cit. (ref. 9), 212.
107. Even committed critics of the faculty model, such as the Herbartian Frank Hayward, could at times be caught using its language; see Frank Hayward and B. N. Langdon-Davies, Democracy and the press (London, 1919), 1.
108. See e.g. Fisher, op. cit. (ref. 8);
109. Lawrence Badash, "British and American views of the German menace in World War I", Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxxiv (1979-80), 91-121.
110. Badash, op. cit. (ref. 28), 93 et passim, 98-100;
111. Heffernan, op. cit. (ref. 11), 161f;
112. Alter, op. cit. (ref. 11), 199.
113. Simon Schaffer, "Scientific discoveries and the end of natural philosophy", Social studies of science, xvi (1986), 387-420, pp. 406-9.
114. Specifically on the use of the concept of genius in debates on the morality of great discoverers, see Richard Yeo, "Genius, method, and morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760-1860", Science in context, ii (1988), 257-84.
115. On the relations between Priestley's philosophy of knowledge and his theology, see John McEvoy, "Joseph Priestley, 'aerial philosopher'; Metaphysics and methodology in Priestley's chemical thought, from 1762 to 1781", Ambix, xxv (1979), 1-55.
116. Note also Christine Macleod, "Concepts of invention and the patent controversy in Victorian Britain", in R. Fox (ed.), Technological change: Methods and themes in the history of technology (Amsterdam, 1996), 137-53.
117. Hollinger, op. cit. (ref. 15), 128-9;
118. Gregory, op. cit. (ref. 11), 11, 12, 54-55, 85, 239.
119. Gregory, op. cit. (ref. 11), 85.
120. Indeed late nineteenth-century ideals of scientific objectivity were deeply, ineradically, connected to a morality of supreme self-restraint; see L. Daston and P. Galison, "The image of objectivity", Representations, xl (1992), 81-128.
121. Richard Gregory, "The message of science", Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1921 (London, 1922), 488-97, pp. 490f.
122. Hollinger, op. cit. (ref. 15), 128;
123. Armytage, op. cit. (ref. 11).
124. A. S. Russell, "Editorial notes", Discovery, i (1920), 3-4;
125. Armytage, op. cit. (ref. 11), 70-71 et passim;
126. Frederick Kenyon, Education, scientific and humane: A report of the proceedings of the Council for Humanistic Studies (London, 1917).
127. Times educational supplement, 9 November 1916, 201 (my emphasis).
128. E. Ray Lankester, "The word humanism", Times educational supplement, 16 November 1916, 209-10;
129. 30 November 1916, 225;
130. 14 December 1916, 241-2;
131. Temple, op. cit. (ref. 8);
132. Kenyon, op. cit. (ref. 36).
133. Alter, op. cit. (ref. 11), 191-213;
134. Hull, op. cit. (ref. 11).
135. This letter was reproduced in the report of the May meeting: The neglect of science: Report of proceedings at a conference held in the rooms of the Linnean Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly W., on Wednesday 3 May 1916 (London, 1916), 41.
136. On drafting the memorandum see Bryant, op. cit. (ref. 6, 1919), 4;
137. idem, op. cit. (ref. 6, 1950-51), 142;
138. Layton, op. cit. (ref. 6, 1984), 193.
139. On Osler's address to the Association of Public School Science Masters, see Harvey Cushing, The life of Sir William Osier (2 vols, Oxford, 1925), ii, 508-9.
140. For the counter-memorandum, see "A plea for tradition", Times, 4 May 1916, 6;
141. reprinted in Kenyon, op. cit. (ref. 36), 5-8.
142. Clifford Allbutt, "Science in the school", Times educational supplement, 16 November 1916, 205-6.
143. William Osler, "The old humanities and the new science: The presidential address delivered before the Classical Association at Oxford, May 1919", British medical journal, S July 1919, 1-7;
144. Frederick Kenyon, as cited by Cushing, op. cit. (ref. 41), ii, 648.
145. R. T. Gunther, Early science in Oxford, i: Chemistry, mathematics, physics and surveying (Oxford, 1923), p. vi;
146. Gushing, op. cit. (ref. 41), ii, 648-9;
147. Charles Webster, "Medicine a social history: Changing ideas on doctors and patients in the age of Shakespeare", in Lloyd G. Stevenson (ed.), A celebration of medical history: The fiftieth anniversary of the Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine and the Welch Medical Library (Baltimore and London, 1982), 103-26, p. 103;
148. A.-K. Mayer, "Fatal mutilations: Educationism and the British background to the 1931 International Congress for the History of Science and Technology", History of science, xl (2002), 445-72, pp. 447-8;
149. Michael Bliss, William Osler: A life in medicine (Oxford, 1999).
150. Further on scientific intellectuals' recommendation for a new humanism, note E. Ray Lankester, "The aim of education", in idem (ed.), Natural science and the classical system in education: Essays old and new (London, 1918), 250-68;
151. Alfred North Whitehead, presidential address to the Mathematical Association of England, 1916, in idem, The aims of education (London, 1929), 1-23;
152. idem, as cited in Kenyon, op. cit. (ref. 36), 10-11;
153. idem, "Science in general education", in A. Hill (ed.), Second Congress of the Universities of the Empire, 1921 (London, 1921), 31-39.
154. George Sarton, "Le nouvel humanisme", Scientia, xxiii (1918), 161-75;
155. Geoffrey Cantor, "Charles Singer and the early years of the British Society for the History of Science", The British journal for the history of science, xxx (1997), 5-23;
156. Mayer, op. cit. (ref. 44);
157. idem, "When things don't talk: Knowledge and belief in the interwar humanism of Charles Singer (1876-1960)", The British journal for the history of science, xxxviii/3 (September 2005) (in press).
158. Gregory, op. cit. (ref. 11), p. v;
159. Lankester, op. cit. (ref. 38);
160. Lankester in Freeman and Hayward (eds), op. cit. (ref. 27), pp. xlvi-vii.
161. Paterson, op. cit. (ref, 20), pp. vi-vii;
162. similarly Murray, op. cit. (ref. 20);
163. William Ramsay, "German 'Kultur', I - as illustrated by German science", Quarterly review, ccxxiii (1915), 313-22.
164. This is detailed in Armytage, op. cit. (ref. 11), 71-72,
165. Kenyon, op. cit. (ref. 36), 13-19.
166. Note also contemporary exhortation, on the part of salient humanists, to substitute co-operation for hostility. See Frederick Kenyon, Education, secondary and university: A report of conferences between the Council for Humanistic Studies and the conjoint Board of Scientific Societies (London, 1919);
167. J. W. MacKail, "The classics in education", review of Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 13),
168. Times literary supplement, 18 January 1917, 30.
169. Presidential address to the Classical Association (summary), Times, 6 January 1917, 10 (for the extended version,
170. see Viscount Bryce, "Our educational future. I. - the worth of ancient literature to the modern world", The fortnightly review, 2 April 1917, 551-66);
171. Mackail, op. cit. (ref. 48).
172. J. W. Mackail, The alliance of Latin and English studies (London, 1923), 4.
173. "Science in secondary schools" (Report of the Committee appointed to consider and report upon the method and substance of science teaching in secondary schools, with particular reference to the essential place of science in general education), Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1917 (London, 1918), 123-207, p. 127.
174. Ibid., 157, 197.
175. T. Percy Nunn, "Science", in Sir John Adams (ed.), The new teaching (London, 1918), 154-98, pp. 160, 161, 168;
176. F. W. Sanderson, "Science in educational reconstruction", in Lankester, op. cit. (ref. 44), 207-49;
177. Mayer, op. cit. (ref. 44), 456-62.
178. Bryant, op. cit. (ref. 6,1950-51), 143-4.
179. Anon., "Science for all: A plea for general science", School science review, ii (1920), 197-202;
180. Brock, op. cit. (ref. 9), 40ff;
181. Layton, op. cit. (ref. 6, 1984), 196.
182. H. G. Wells, Experiment in autobiography: Discoveries and conclusions of a very ordinary brain (since 1866) (2 vols, London, 1934), ii, chap. 5;
183. Webb, op. cit. (ref. 22).
184. On Oundle, see H. G. Wells, The story of a great schoolmaster: Being a plain account of the life and ideas of Sanderson of Oundle (London, 1924), 137, 180 et passim.
185. "Report of the Committee appointed by the Prime Minister to enquire into the position of natural Science in the educational system of Great Britain", Parliamentary papers, 1918, ix, Cd. 9011, §42;
186. "The position of natural science in education", Nature, 18 April 1918, 135-6;
187. Armytage, op. cit. (ref. 11), 80.
188. Richard Gregory, "Substance and method of science teaching", Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1919 (London, 1920), 354-5.
189. Richard Gregory, "Educational and school science", Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1922 (London, 1923), 204-18, p. 207;
190. Anon., op. cit. (ref. 55), 201.
191. Note also Charles Singer, "Scientific humanism", The realist, i (1929), 12-18, p. 18.
192. For an assessment of the impact of this debate on educational arrangements, see Mary Waring, Social pressures and curriculum innovation: A study of the Nuffield Science Teaching Project (London, 1979), 30f,
193. Gary McCulloch, "A technocratic vision: The ideology of school science reform in Britain in the 1950s", Social studies of science, xviii (1988), 703-24;
194. on the binary economy of two-cultures arguments, see Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison, "Introduction", in idem (eds), Picturing science producing art (New York and London, 1998), 1-23;
195. further, Sophie Forgan, "Festivals of science and the two cultures: Science, design and display in the Festival of Britain", The British journal for the history of science, xxxi (1998), 217-40;
196. A.-K. Mayer, '"A combative sense of duty' : Englishness and the scientists", in A.-K. Mayer and Christopher Lawrence (eds), Regenerating England: Science, medicine and culture in inter-war Britain (Amsterdam, 2000), 67-106;
197. A.-K. Mayer, "Setting up a discipline: Conflicting agendas of the Cambridge History of Science Committee, 1936-1950", Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxxi (2000), 665-89;
198. idem, "Singer, Pollard and the neglect of science: The two cultures at University College, London", paper presented at the research seminar of the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College, London, 19 May 2003.