Reflections on popular science in britain: Genres, categories, and historians

ISIS

Volumn 100, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 333-345

  O'Connor, Ralph ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 70349604470     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/599549     Document Type: Article

References (92)

1. Roger Cooter and Stephen Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture, " History of Science, 1994, 32:237-267.
2. Some examples of recent studies of elite popularizers in Britain are Paul White, Thomas Huxley: Making the "Man of Science" (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003).
3. Jack Morrell, John Phillips and the Business of Victorian Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 133-156.
4. On professional writers see Aileen Fyfe, "Conscientious Workmen or Booksellers' Hacks? The Professional Identities of Science Writers in the Mid- Nineteenth Century, " Isis, 2005, 96:192-223.
5. On female popularizers see Ann B. Shteir, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora's Daughters and Botany in England, 1760 to 1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996);.
6. Barbara T. Gates, Kindred Nature: Victorian and Edwardian Women Embrace the Living World (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1998).
7. On all of the above see Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2007);.
8. Ralph O'Connor, The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856 (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2007).
9. Examples include Iwan Rhys Morus, Frankenstein's Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early-Nineteenth-Century London (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998);.
10. Sophie Forgan, "Bricks and Bones: Architecture and Science in Victorian Britain, " in The Architecture of Science, ed. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 181-208;.
11. Anne Secord, "Botany on a Plate: Pleasure and the Power of Pictures in Promoting Early Nineteenth-Century Scientific Knowledge, " Isis, 2002, 93:28 -57;.
12. Sadiah Qureshi, "Displaying Sara Baartman, the 'Hottentot Venus, '" Hist. Sci., 2004, 42:233- 257.
13. Examples include Jonathan R. Topham, "Scientific Publishing and the Reading of Science in Nineteenth- Century Britain: A Historiographical Survey and Guide to Sources, " Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2000, 31A:559-612.
14. Aileen Fyfe, Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2004).
15. See http://www.sciper.org/. For analysis see Geoffrey Cantor and Sally Shuttleworth, eds., Science Serialized: Representations of the Sciences in Nineteenth-century Periodicals (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004).
16. Louise Henson et al., eds., Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004);.
17. Geoffrey Cantor, et al., Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004).
18. Examples include Jonathan R. Topham, "Beyond the 'Common Context': The Production and Reading of the Bridgewater Treatises, " Isis, 1998, 89:233-262.
19. James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2000).
20. Topham, "Scientific Publishing and the Reading of Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (cit. n. 4); and the essays in Aileen Fyfe and Bernard Lightman, eds., Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2007).
21. Examples include Anne Secord, "Science in the Pub: Artisan Botanists in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire, " Hist. Sci., 1994, 32:269 -315.
22. Alison Winter, "The Construction of Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in the Early Victorian Life Sciences, " in Victorian Science in Context, ed. Bernard Lightman (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 24-50.
23. Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1998).
24. Simon J. Knell, The Culture of English Geology, 1815-1851: A Science Revealed through Its Collecting (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).
25. A. Secord, "Artisan Naturalists: Science as Popular Culture in Nineteenth-century England" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. London, 2002.
26. the essays in David Clifford et al., eds., Repositioning Victorian Sciences: Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Thinking (London: Anthem, 2006).
27. On the role of deeply embedded cultural values see Cooter and Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places" (cit. n. 1), p. 253.
28. Regarding the "follies" see, e.g., John M. Lynch, "'Follies of the Present Day': Scriptural Geology from 1817 to 1857, " in Creationism and Scriptural Geology, 1817-1857, ed. Lynch, 7 vols., Vol. 1 (Bristol: Thoemmes, 2002), pp. ix-xxiv.
29. For an alternative approach see John Hedley Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (Edinburgh: Clark, 1998), pp. 57-62.
30. Ralph O'Connor, "Young-Earth Creationists in Nineteenth-Century Britain? Towards a Reassessment of 'Scriptural Geology, '" Hist. Sci., 2007, 45:357- 403. For a balanced account of more recent creationisms, focusing on intellectual leaders and key institutions.
31. see Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, expanded ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2006).
32. A. Secord, "Artisan Naturalists" (cit. n. 7), p. 11.
33. On the need for historians to become activists see Graeme Gooday et al., "Does Science Education Need the History of Science?" Isis, 2008, 99:322-330.
34. Peter Burke, "From Pioneers to Settlers: Recent Studies of the History of Popular Culture, " Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1983, 25:181-187.
35. On some of these perspectives see David N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2003).
36. For a more detailed diagnosis see James A. Secord, "Knowledge in Transit, " Isis, 2004, 95:654-672.
37. See also the essays in "The Big Picture, " British Journal for the History of Science, 1993, 26(4): 387-483.
38. Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science (cit. n. 2).
39. A broader brush is applied by David Knight, Public Understanding of Science: A History of Communicating Scientific Ideas (London: Routledge, 2006.
40. Peter Broks, Understanding Popular Science (Maidenhead: Open Univ. Press, 2006).
41. Important analytical surveys in other national contexts include Andreas W. Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutscheÖ ffentlichkeit, 1848-1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998);.
42. Paola Govoni, Un pubblico per la scienza: La divulgazione scientifica nell'Italia in formazione (Rome: Carocci, 2002). On the need for longue durée narratives in this area see
43. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent's essay in this Focus section;.
44. Bensaude-Vincent, "A Genealogy of the Increasing Gap between Science and the Public, " Public Understanding of Science, 2001, 10:99 -113.
45. One obvious but currently rare means of connecting monographs or edited collections into larger narratives is for the author or editor (rather than a professional indexer) to generate a substantial index in which key concepts are broken down analytically rather than merely itemized where the word itself appears. As the starting point for most academic readers, an index should provide conceptual pathways into the work itself rather than a perfunctory list of "things mentioned.".
46. J. Secord, "Knowledge in Transit" (cit. n. 12), pp. 660-664;.
47. Jonathan R. Topham, "Rethinking the History of Science Popularization/Popular Science, " in Popularizing Science and Technology in the European Periphery, 1800-2000, ed. Faidra Papanelopoulou, Agusti" Nieto-Galan, and Enrique Perdiguero (Aldershot: Ashgate, in press).
48. On this concept see Hans Robert, Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: Univ. Minnesota Press, 1982), p. 22.
49. On the history of genre theory see Heather Dubrow, Genre (London: Methuen, 1982);.
50. David Duff, ed., Modern Genre Theory (London: Longman, 2000). For more detailed methodological analysis.
51. see Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982).
52. See Rene" Wellek, "The Concept of Evolution in Literary History, " in Wellek, Concepts of Criticism, ed. Stephen J. Nichols, Jr. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 37-53.
53. This process has its roots in the mid-Victorian "culture wars" charted by Paul White, "Cross-Cultural Encounters: The Co-Production of Science and Literature in Mid-Victorian Periodicals, " in Transactions and Encounters: Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Roger Luckhurst and Josephine McDonagh (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 2002), pp. 75-95.
54. See also Jonathan R. Topham, "The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, and Cheap Miscellanies in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain, " in Cantor et al., Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical (cit. n. 5), pp. 37-66, on pp. 65-66.
55. C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution: The Rede Lecture, 1959 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959). Early modernists are less in thrall to this division: before 1800 "literature" meant the full spectrum of written genres, so the same source material benefits from being examined from a wide range of disciplinary viewpoints.
56. For studies of the various bibliographic genres in which science writing found a place see, among others, Marina Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine, eds., Books and the Sciences in History (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000);.
57. Anders Lundgren and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, eds., Communicating Chemistry: Textbooks and Their Audiences, 1789-1939 (Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2000);.
58. Cantor, et al., Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical (cit. n. 5). For some preliminary mapping exercises.
59. see Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science (cit. n. 2);.
60. O'Connor, Earth on Show (cit. n. 2), Chs. 6, 9, and 10.
61. J. Secord, Victorian Sensation (cit. n. 6), pp. 87-110;.
62. Marianne Sommer, "The Romantic Cave? TheScientific and Poetic Quests for Subterranean Spaces in Britain, " Earth Sciences History, 2003, 22:172-208. On the manipulation of genre by individual texts.
63. see David Duff, Romance and Revolution: Shelley and the Politics of a Genre (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994);.
64. Herbert F. Tucker, Epic: Britain's Heroic Muse, 1790-1910 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008.
65. Prescriptive, neoclassical genre models were of course often used by historical actors (as they are today) to discredit as "monsters" writings they disapproved of.
66. See J. Secord, Victorian Sensation, p. 41;.
67. Victoria Carroll, "'Beyond the Pale of Ordinary Criticism': Eccentricity and the Fossil Books of Thomas Hawkins, " Isis, 2007, 98:225-265. My point is that such models belonged to an older, largely theoretical tradition that was being pushed out at a practical level by new forms of communication.
68. J. Secord, "Knowledge in Transit" (cit. n. 12), p. 670;.
69. see also Topham, "Rethinking the History of Science Popularization/Popular Science" (cit. n. 15).
70. Tim Harris, "Problematising Popular Culture, " in Popular Culture in England, c. 1500-1850, ed. Harris (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 1-27, on p. 25.
71. J. Secord, "Knowledge in Transit" (cit. n. 12), p. 670.
72. Aileen Fyfe and Bernard Lightman, "Science in the Marketplace: An Introduction, " in Science in the Marketplace, ed. Fyfe and Lightman (cit. n. 6), pp. 1-19, on p. 2.
73. See also John van Wyhe's rehabilitation of the concept of "diffusion" in "The Diffusion of Phrenology through Public Lecturing, " in Science in the Marketplace, ed. Fyfe and Lightman, pp. 60-96.
74. This is not to deny that actors' categories of "the popular" deserve closer historical attention than has hitherto been the case (see the other contributions to this Focus section).
75. Roger Chartier, quoted in Cooter and Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places" (cit. n. 1), p. 249;.
76. Melanie Keene, "'Every Boy & Girl a Scientist': Instruments for Children in Interwar Britain, " Isis, 2007, 98:266 -289;.
77. Keene, "Object Lessons: Sensory Science Education, 1830-1870" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Cambridge, 2008).
78. J. Secord, "Knowledge in Transit" (cit. n. 12), pp. 670-671;.
79. Cooter and Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places, " pp. 253-254.
80. Martin J. S. Rudwick, Worlds before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 4 (quotation), 564.
81. See, e.g., the studies listed in note 7, above.
82. See Anne Secord, "Corresponding Interests: Artisans and Gentlemen in Nineteenth-Century Natural History, " Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1994, 27:383- 408.
83. See Topham, "Rethinking the History of Science Popularization/ Popular Science" (cit. n. 15);.
84. he draws on Cooter and Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places" (cit. n. 1), p. 254.
85. Cooter and Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places, " p. 256;.
86. Andreas Daum's essay in this Focus section. See also the opening section of Katherine Pandora's essay in this Focus section.
87. On the Buckland example see Topham, "Rethinking the History of Science Popularization/Popular Science" (cit. n. 15).
88. Burke, "From Pioneers to Settlers" (cit. n. 10);.
89. Harris, "Problematising Popular Culture" (cit. n. 24), p. 3.
90. My suggestion is thus not intended as an alternative to the projects sketched out by Secord, Topham, or theother contributors to this Focus section, but as a procedure that might usefully be followed within such projects.
91. An example of a necessary deletion is the straightforwardly positivistic and pejorative label "pseudoscience."
92. Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 1, 161, 164-165.