Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences , Chicago University Press, Chicago (2007) xi + 545 pages, US$45 cloth (original) (raw)
Related papers
Science for all: The popularization of science in early twentieth-century Britain
Science Education, 2011
The periodic release of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) report provides a regular opportunity for science educators and scientists alike to bemoan the sorry state of Americans' basic knowledge of science. Americans, we are reminded, do not understand science and lag behind citizens of other industrialized countries. We hear the familiar calls for the United States to improve science education in order for the country to remain competitive in an increasingly global economy. Improving science education for all, the argument goes, promises economic stability. Science educators have traditionally responded to these calls by suggesting reforms in the formal educational system. Yet, by focusing on school science, educators have tended to overlook other popular spaces where the public encounters science as often, if not more often: in books, in magazines, on television, and in other forms of popular media. In today's socially and technologically networked and complex world, learning about science through such informal resources promises to increase in relevance. One need only look at the recent National Research Council (2009) report Learning Science in Informal Environments to see the increasing recognition of these spaces. Such informal spaces for learning about science, however, are not new. In his latest book, Peter J. Bowler narrates the rich and complex history of popular science in a time much like ours of today: early 20th-century Britain. His work not only stands on its own as an excellent piece of historical scholarship, highly engaging and meticulously researched, but also promises to enrich science educators' understanding of how the public comes to understand, interact, and learn about science as well as the ways in which economic, social, and national factors influence the production of this material. The book is especially timely, as today's economic and social circumstances in many ways parallel those from a century ago: reduced costs of media production, increasing specialization of scientific knowledge, profusion of everyday technologies, and further networking of the global market. There seems to be a similar urgency now, as there was then, for increasing scientific understanding among the public. Bowler's book surveys science books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers written for the general public from the late 1890s through World War II. These media, each intended for a different audience, served a variety of political, pedagogical, and financial purposes. Bowler weaves, to a varying degree of success, each strand into his story. Most impressive about the book is the vast trove of media collected and the biographical register compiled at the end of the book. Unable to find many popular sources in libraries, Bowler has collected a myriad of pamphlets and self-help books, has sifted through daily newspapers and weekly magazines, and has even included some relevant archival material in order to point to the shifting ways in which publishers, scientists, and journalists negotiated with each other in
Review of Victorian popularizers of science: designing nature for new audiences
Published online by Academici (Now defunct), 2008
BOOK REVIEW This is a scholarly work of 502 pages with a further 43 pages of bibliography and indexes in a hardback edition. It contains about 68 black and white illustrations most of which are clear and relevant, though a few are unduly dark; the book cover is nicely coloured which might lead some to expect internal coloured plates, as part of the joy of the Victorian texts being described is their colourful illustrations, but there are none, nor is there an index of illustrations. Victorian popularizers of science is priced at a very reasonable $ 45.00.
Science and Society. Scientific Societies in Victorian England
The article analyzes the development of scientific thinking and production in England from the early to the late Victorian period. 19th century England saw a thorough change in every sphere of society including that of science. This was a time when the very idea of science -as understood in the 20th century -started to emerge. The article compares the modus operandi of three scientific bodies of utmost importance: the Royal Society, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the so-called X-Club. The first one represented an old-fashioned scientific body with a narrow, aristocratic social basis, whereas the BAAS, a reformist, much newer society was founded with the manifest idea of science as a universal, all-encompassing and neutral field, free of political and religious influences. The article shows that despite this official standing, the BAAS still represented a narrow range of scientific, political, cultural and social interests. In contrast to both of these bodies, the X-Club, an informal but highly influential set of nine scientists, introduced the idea of a modernized science. Largely due to their influence and shrewd strategic action, by the end of the century the scientific sphere had become far more independent of extra-scientific influences than ever before. The article concludes, however, that this independence meant a greater need to disguise the social and cultural embeddedness of science with a new set of criteria for scientific legitimacy, rather than actual, full autonomy.
Periodical Formats in the Market
Review of Gowan Dawson, Bernard Lightman, Sally Shuttleworth, and Jonathan R. Topham, eds, Science Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Constructing Scientific Communities (2020)
Strange Science: Investigating the Limits of Knowledge in the Victorian Age
Annals of Science, 2017
We would like to begin by thanking our wonderful contributors for their exceptional scholarship, intellectual generosity, and unfailing good humor. They have all made this process a true pleasure throughout. We are also grateful to the editorial staff at the University of Michigan Press and the anonymous external readers for their helpful and detailed comments. Their insight and assistance has been instrumental in helping us revise the collection. Sincere thanks are due to Molly Walsh and Brittany Larson, who helped us to prepare the manuscript for publication. We would also be remiss if we did not thank Aaron McCollough for his enthusiastic support of the project in its early stages. We would finally like to thank our families and friends for their encouragement throughout this process. Lara Karpenko thanks her departmental chair, Deirdre Keenan, for her tireless support of her colleagues and for her boundless enthusiasm. Her mentorship and friendship is deeply appreciated. Lara would also like to thank her mother, Christine Karpenko, for instilling an early love of Victorian literature, her father, Leonard Karpenko, for showing her the wonders of science through a telescope, and her husband, William Phelps, for his unfailing love and support. Shalyn Claggett thanks her parents, Sam and Sherrie Claggett; her husband, Matt Lavine; and her best friend, Lucy Canessa. She sincerely appreciates their continual encouragement and moral support in this and all things.