Richard Noakes - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Richard Noakes
Inference: International Review of Science
Is scientific advancement entrapped by its historical context, or could history be the driving fo... more Is scientific advancement entrapped by its historical context, or could history be the driving force behind such progress? Richard Noakes and David Kordahl discuss.
Copyright © 2004 University of Chicago PressThe article is not the final print version, and is no... more Copyright © 2004 University of Chicago PressThe article is not the final print version, and is not to be citedContaining more than 1,200 new entries on both major and minor figures of British science, this four-volume dictionary examines how the theories and practices of scientists were shaped by Victorian beliefs about religion, gender, imperialism, and politics, presenting a rich panorama of the development of science in the nineteenth century. While the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists covers those working in traditional scientific areas such as physics, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, and biology, it also acknowledges those working in the human sciences such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, and medicine. In addition, areas often overlooked by historians of science—such as phrenology, mesmerism, spiritualism, scientific illustration, scientific journalism and publishing, instrument making, and government policy—are included here, as are the important ...
Oxford Scholarship Online
This chapter examines the origins, development and reception of Oliver Lodge’s ‘psychic’ uses of ... more This chapter examines the origins, development and reception of Oliver Lodge’s ‘psychic’ uses of the ether of space. It explores the connections that he made between his Maxwellian conceptions of the ether, and psychical research into the soul. It argues that his ideas of a psychic ether owed much to Balfour Stewart and Peter Guthrie Tait’s Unseen Universe (1875) and to a growing friendship with the major figure in Victorian psychical research, F. W. H. Myers. Lodge’s attachment to the ether, and its possible psychic functions, only grew stronger after 1900 when the necessity for a quasi-mechanical medium was challenged by relativity theory, and the need for the soul to have a more substantial state was fuelled by the mass slaughter in World War I. The chapter concludes by arguing that Lodge’s conceptions of the ether enjoyed much greater popularity among wireless engineers and spiritualists than among fellow physicists.
© Cambridge University Press 2003. Reprinted with permission
Physics and Psychics, 2019
Culture And Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media, 2017
Physics and Psychics, 2019
Physics and Psychics, 2019
In August 1862, the leading article of one British periodical was headed 'Animal "Magnetism"'. 1 ... more In August 1862, the leading article of one British periodical was headed 'Animal "Magnetism"'. 1 The quotation marks around the word magnetism indicated the anonymous author's understanding of at least one of the many controversies that had surrounded this subject for over half a century. This was the question of whether, as animal magnetism's proponents claimed, a weightless, invisible bodily fluid, force or emanation by which the will of an individual was alleged to directly influence the mind and body of another person was analogous to the magnetism associated with minerals. By the early 1860s, many of those who had accepted the effects of animal magnetism but rejected the idea that they derived from a kind of magnetic fluid described the effect as mesmerism, in honour of the Swabian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who, in the 1770s, had announced the discovery of this 'magnetic' form of influence and turned it into the basis of a medical therapy that proved both controversial and popular in Continental Europe, Britain and North America. 'Animal "Magnetism"' was much more positive about animal magnetism than its cautious title suggested. Anticipating disdain from some readers, it asserted that the "quasi science" rested on indisputable facts and urged the need to establish connections between facts of an "extraordinary character and occult nature" and those "accepted by science". 2 There were moral and intellectual motivations for this. Establishing facts about animal magnetism was no less important to the "cause of truth" than the recognition of other facts that "scientific orthodoxy" had a lamentable tendency to dismiss simply because such facts appeared to conflict with "accepted doctrine". 3 Moreover, recent developments in the physical sciences suggested the strong possibility that an obscure force, fluid or agency somehow connected with life could be related to the known physical forces. The eminent German chemist Justus von Liebig
Physics and Psychics, 2019
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2009
to social order. By the time Gaetana died in 1799, the Catholic Enlightenment that had nurtured h... more to social order. By the time Gaetana died in 1799, the Catholic Enlightenment that had nurtured her scientific and mathematical interests in the early part of the century had drawn to a close. Mazzotti’s account of the rise and fall of a relatively non-gendered intellectual environment in the early eighteenth century thus sheds light on a rare instance in which the Catholic Church actually advocated women’s equality. The strangeness of that phenomenon alone renders his work an interesting addition to the history of science. JOSIPA G. PETRUNIĆ University of Edinburgh
The American Historical Review, 2005
CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS / ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / xi introduction / Enchantment a la Mode / i... more CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS / ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / xi introduction / Enchantment a la Mode / i one / Culture and the Occult at the Fin de Siecle / 17 two / Magicians of the New Dawn / 51 three / Sexual Politics / 85 four / Modern Enchantment and the Consciousness ...
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2009
Advancement of Science (BAAS)-not its leadership, or its annual pageant, but its cold, hard cash.... more Advancement of Science (BAAS)-not its leadership, or its annual pageant, but its cold, hard cash. British tidal research would have foundered several times over without injections from the research committee of that institution. Victorian success in observational networks of all sorts clearly stemmed from the example of the BAAS commitment to such projects, and is underappreciated presumably because subsequent generations worked so hard to create the rationale for public funding of science. Reidy lays claim through such stories to the theme of Victorian scientific collaboration, and his conclusions on collaboration as ideal and as practice are valuable to a wide range of other sciences and other eras. Reidy also concludes that the story of tidal research testifies to the globalizing vision of Victorian science, citing Whewell's isographic techniques, the 1830s networks for synchronic observation, and a keen sense of natural knowledge as the framework for global commerce and empire. This is familiar historiographical terrain, though no less interesting in its details for that. And yet the overwhelming impression left by this story is of the weight and significance of local conditions and local expertise, and the limited penetration of these by the elite methods and practitioners of natural philosophy. The tidology of the 1830s may have held consequences for future initiatives in government-sponsored science, but it is not really clear that it came to dominate the other world of practical navigational expertise that Reidy lays out so well. Nor was I fully convinced that the enterprise of tidal research led to a decisive reimagining of the ocean as a controlled natural space. Whewell's maps and tables seem powerful in some settings, but paperythin in others. An 'end-user ' picture of the authority of the new knowledge of the nineteenth century related to the ocean-who used the new knowledge about magnetism, meteorology, tides and surveying, how and when, at home or abroad-is needed to make this clear. The strengths of this book instead lie with the rich picture of the organization and production of knowledge and the bridges between different interests in a science of the oceans.
Physics and Psychics, 2019
In August 1862, the leading article of one British periodical was headed 'Animal "Magnetism"'. 1 ... more In August 1862, the leading article of one British periodical was headed 'Animal "Magnetism"'. 1 The quotation marks around the word magnetism indicated the anonymous author's understanding of at least one of the many controversies that had surrounded this subject for over half a century. This was the question of whether, as animal magnetism's proponents claimed, a weightless, invisible bodily fluid, force or emanation by which the will of an individual was alleged to directly influence the mind and body of another person was analogous to the magnetism associated with minerals. By the early 1860s, many of those who had accepted the effects of animal magnetism but rejected the idea that they derived from a kind of magnetic fluid described the effect as mesmerism, in honour of the Swabian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who, in the 1770s, had announced the discovery of this 'magnetic' form of influence and turned it into the basis of a medical therapy that proved both controversial and popular in Continental Europe, Britain and North America. 'Animal "Magnetism"' was much more positive about animal magnetism than its cautious title suggested. Anticipating disdain from some readers, it asserted that the "quasi science" rested on indisputable facts and urged the need to establish connections between facts of an "extraordinary character and occult nature" and those "accepted by science". 2 There were moral and intellectual motivations for this. Establishing facts about animal magnetism was no less important to the "cause of truth" than the recognition of other facts that "scientific orthodoxy" had a lamentable tendency to dismiss simply because such facts appeared to conflict with "accepted doctrine". 3 Moreover, recent developments in the physical sciences suggested the strong possibility that an obscure force, fluid or agency somehow connected with life could be related to the known physical forces. The eminent German chemist Justus von Liebig 4 Examples from medical periodicals are [Anon.], '
The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, 2004
The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, 2004
This paper surveys the different uses to which history has been put, and the different historiogr... more This paper surveys the different uses to which history has been put, and the different historiographical perspectives adopted, in psychical research and related enterprises since the mid-nineteenth century. It contrasts recent historiographies of the science with those employed from late eighteenth century to the 1960s, and shows how these and other developments in the practice of history have dramatically changed our understanding of the places occupied by psychical research and the ‘occult ’ in ‘orthodox ’ sciences and wider culture. The second half of this paper outlines some of the key ways in which we can proceed still further in the shift towards better situating psychical research in its contemporary scientific contexts and abandoning rigid and ultimately unhelpful distinctions between ‘science ’ and ‘pseudo-science’. I suggest that by deepening our understanding of nineteenth and early twentieth century scientific cultures — their troubles as well as successes — we can bette...
The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, 2004
Inference: International Review of Science
Is scientific advancement entrapped by its historical context, or could history be the driving fo... more Is scientific advancement entrapped by its historical context, or could history be the driving force behind such progress? Richard Noakes and David Kordahl discuss.
Copyright © 2004 University of Chicago PressThe article is not the final print version, and is no... more Copyright © 2004 University of Chicago PressThe article is not the final print version, and is not to be citedContaining more than 1,200 new entries on both major and minor figures of British science, this four-volume dictionary examines how the theories and practices of scientists were shaped by Victorian beliefs about religion, gender, imperialism, and politics, presenting a rich panorama of the development of science in the nineteenth century. While the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists covers those working in traditional scientific areas such as physics, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, and biology, it also acknowledges those working in the human sciences such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, and medicine. In addition, areas often overlooked by historians of science—such as phrenology, mesmerism, spiritualism, scientific illustration, scientific journalism and publishing, instrument making, and government policy—are included here, as are the important ...
Oxford Scholarship Online
This chapter examines the origins, development and reception of Oliver Lodge’s ‘psychic’ uses of ... more This chapter examines the origins, development and reception of Oliver Lodge’s ‘psychic’ uses of the ether of space. It explores the connections that he made between his Maxwellian conceptions of the ether, and psychical research into the soul. It argues that his ideas of a psychic ether owed much to Balfour Stewart and Peter Guthrie Tait’s Unseen Universe (1875) and to a growing friendship with the major figure in Victorian psychical research, F. W. H. Myers. Lodge’s attachment to the ether, and its possible psychic functions, only grew stronger after 1900 when the necessity for a quasi-mechanical medium was challenged by relativity theory, and the need for the soul to have a more substantial state was fuelled by the mass slaughter in World War I. The chapter concludes by arguing that Lodge’s conceptions of the ether enjoyed much greater popularity among wireless engineers and spiritualists than among fellow physicists.
© Cambridge University Press 2003. Reprinted with permission
Physics and Psychics, 2019
Culture And Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media, 2017
Physics and Psychics, 2019
Physics and Psychics, 2019
In August 1862, the leading article of one British periodical was headed 'Animal "Magnetism"'. 1 ... more In August 1862, the leading article of one British periodical was headed 'Animal "Magnetism"'. 1 The quotation marks around the word magnetism indicated the anonymous author's understanding of at least one of the many controversies that had surrounded this subject for over half a century. This was the question of whether, as animal magnetism's proponents claimed, a weightless, invisible bodily fluid, force or emanation by which the will of an individual was alleged to directly influence the mind and body of another person was analogous to the magnetism associated with minerals. By the early 1860s, many of those who had accepted the effects of animal magnetism but rejected the idea that they derived from a kind of magnetic fluid described the effect as mesmerism, in honour of the Swabian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who, in the 1770s, had announced the discovery of this 'magnetic' form of influence and turned it into the basis of a medical therapy that proved both controversial and popular in Continental Europe, Britain and North America. 'Animal "Magnetism"' was much more positive about animal magnetism than its cautious title suggested. Anticipating disdain from some readers, it asserted that the "quasi science" rested on indisputable facts and urged the need to establish connections between facts of an "extraordinary character and occult nature" and those "accepted by science". 2 There were moral and intellectual motivations for this. Establishing facts about animal magnetism was no less important to the "cause of truth" than the recognition of other facts that "scientific orthodoxy" had a lamentable tendency to dismiss simply because such facts appeared to conflict with "accepted doctrine". 3 Moreover, recent developments in the physical sciences suggested the strong possibility that an obscure force, fluid or agency somehow connected with life could be related to the known physical forces. The eminent German chemist Justus von Liebig
Physics and Psychics, 2019
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2009
to social order. By the time Gaetana died in 1799, the Catholic Enlightenment that had nurtured h... more to social order. By the time Gaetana died in 1799, the Catholic Enlightenment that had nurtured her scientific and mathematical interests in the early part of the century had drawn to a close. Mazzotti’s account of the rise and fall of a relatively non-gendered intellectual environment in the early eighteenth century thus sheds light on a rare instance in which the Catholic Church actually advocated women’s equality. The strangeness of that phenomenon alone renders his work an interesting addition to the history of science. JOSIPA G. PETRUNIĆ University of Edinburgh
The American Historical Review, 2005
CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS / ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / xi introduction / Enchantment a la Mode / i... more CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS / ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / xi introduction / Enchantment a la Mode / i one / Culture and the Occult at the Fin de Siecle / 17 two / Magicians of the New Dawn / 51 three / Sexual Politics / 85 four / Modern Enchantment and the Consciousness ...
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2009
Advancement of Science (BAAS)-not its leadership, or its annual pageant, but its cold, hard cash.... more Advancement of Science (BAAS)-not its leadership, or its annual pageant, but its cold, hard cash. British tidal research would have foundered several times over without injections from the research committee of that institution. Victorian success in observational networks of all sorts clearly stemmed from the example of the BAAS commitment to such projects, and is underappreciated presumably because subsequent generations worked so hard to create the rationale for public funding of science. Reidy lays claim through such stories to the theme of Victorian scientific collaboration, and his conclusions on collaboration as ideal and as practice are valuable to a wide range of other sciences and other eras. Reidy also concludes that the story of tidal research testifies to the globalizing vision of Victorian science, citing Whewell's isographic techniques, the 1830s networks for synchronic observation, and a keen sense of natural knowledge as the framework for global commerce and empire. This is familiar historiographical terrain, though no less interesting in its details for that. And yet the overwhelming impression left by this story is of the weight and significance of local conditions and local expertise, and the limited penetration of these by the elite methods and practitioners of natural philosophy. The tidology of the 1830s may have held consequences for future initiatives in government-sponsored science, but it is not really clear that it came to dominate the other world of practical navigational expertise that Reidy lays out so well. Nor was I fully convinced that the enterprise of tidal research led to a decisive reimagining of the ocean as a controlled natural space. Whewell's maps and tables seem powerful in some settings, but paperythin in others. An 'end-user ' picture of the authority of the new knowledge of the nineteenth century related to the ocean-who used the new knowledge about magnetism, meteorology, tides and surveying, how and when, at home or abroad-is needed to make this clear. The strengths of this book instead lie with the rich picture of the organization and production of knowledge and the bridges between different interests in a science of the oceans.
Physics and Psychics, 2019
In August 1862, the leading article of one British periodical was headed 'Animal "Magnetism"'. 1 ... more In August 1862, the leading article of one British periodical was headed 'Animal "Magnetism"'. 1 The quotation marks around the word magnetism indicated the anonymous author's understanding of at least one of the many controversies that had surrounded this subject for over half a century. This was the question of whether, as animal magnetism's proponents claimed, a weightless, invisible bodily fluid, force or emanation by which the will of an individual was alleged to directly influence the mind and body of another person was analogous to the magnetism associated with minerals. By the early 1860s, many of those who had accepted the effects of animal magnetism but rejected the idea that they derived from a kind of magnetic fluid described the effect as mesmerism, in honour of the Swabian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who, in the 1770s, had announced the discovery of this 'magnetic' form of influence and turned it into the basis of a medical therapy that proved both controversial and popular in Continental Europe, Britain and North America. 'Animal "Magnetism"' was much more positive about animal magnetism than its cautious title suggested. Anticipating disdain from some readers, it asserted that the "quasi science" rested on indisputable facts and urged the need to establish connections between facts of an "extraordinary character and occult nature" and those "accepted by science". 2 There were moral and intellectual motivations for this. Establishing facts about animal magnetism was no less important to the "cause of truth" than the recognition of other facts that "scientific orthodoxy" had a lamentable tendency to dismiss simply because such facts appeared to conflict with "accepted doctrine". 3 Moreover, recent developments in the physical sciences suggested the strong possibility that an obscure force, fluid or agency somehow connected with life could be related to the known physical forces. The eminent German chemist Justus von Liebig 4 Examples from medical periodicals are [Anon.], '
The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, 2004
The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, 2004
This paper surveys the different uses to which history has been put, and the different historiogr... more This paper surveys the different uses to which history has been put, and the different historiographical perspectives adopted, in psychical research and related enterprises since the mid-nineteenth century. It contrasts recent historiographies of the science with those employed from late eighteenth century to the 1960s, and shows how these and other developments in the practice of history have dramatically changed our understanding of the places occupied by psychical research and the ‘occult ’ in ‘orthodox ’ sciences and wider culture. The second half of this paper outlines some of the key ways in which we can proceed still further in the shift towards better situating psychical research in its contemporary scientific contexts and abandoning rigid and ultimately unhelpful distinctions between ‘science ’ and ‘pseudo-science’. I suggest that by deepening our understanding of nineteenth and early twentieth century scientific cultures — their troubles as well as successes — we can bette...
The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, 2004