Reluctant Technocrats: Science Promotion in the Neglect-of-Science Debate of 1916–1918

Akin William E. , Technocracy and the American dream (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1977); Carlisle Robert B. , “The birth of technocracy: Science, society and Saint-Simonians”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxv (1974), 445–64; and Gunnell John G. , “The technocratic image and the theory of technocracy”, Technology and culture, xxiii (1982), 392–416. See, further, Searle Geoffrey , The quest for national efficiency: A study in British politics and political thought, 1899–1914 (Oxford, 1971); and Perkin Harold , The rise of professional society: England since 1880 (London, 1989). For Bacon's status as an ancestor of technocratic ideology, note e.g. Fischer Frank , Technocracy and the politics of expertise (Newbury Park, CA, 1990), 66–67; Segal Howard P. , Technological utopianism in American culture (Chicago and London, 1985); Merchant Caroline , The death of nature (New York, 1980), 172, 180–1; Burris Beverly H. , Technocracy at work (Albany, 1993), 22; Meynaud Jean , Technocracy, transl. by Barnes Paul (New York, [1964] 1968), 194; and Reed John L. , The newest whore of Babylon: The emergence of technocracy. A study in the mechanization of man (Boston, 1975), 35–39.

Edgerton David , “Science and the nation: Towards new histories of twentieth-century Britain”, inaugural lecture delivered on 15 October 2002, Imperial College, London (forthcoming in Historical research); and idem, Warfare state: Militarism, technocracy and expertise in twentieth-century Britain (forthcoming).

Collini Stefan , “Introduction”, in Snow C. P. , The two cultures (Cambridge, 1993), pp. vii–lxxi; White Paul , Thomas Huxley: Making the ‘man of science’ (Cambridge, 2003); Barnes Barry Shapin Stephen , “Head and hand: Rhetorical resources in British pedagogical writing, 1770–1850”, Oxford review of education, ii (1976), 231–54; and Williams Raymond , The long revolution (London, 1961).

Turner Frank M. , “Public science in Britain, 1980–1919”, Isis, lxxi (1980), 589–608; Collins Peter , “The origins of the British Association's education section”, British journal of educational studies, xxvii (1979), 232–44; Sutherland G. Sharp S. , “‘The fust official psychologist in the wurrld’: Aspects of the professionalization of psychology in early twentieth-century Britain”, History of science, xviii (1980), 181–208; and Sutherland G. , Ability, merit and measurement: Mental testing and English education (Oxford, 1984).

White Paul , “Ministers of culture: Arnold, Huxley and liberal Anglican reform of learning”, History of science, xliii (2005), 115–38.

“Neglect of science: A cause of failures in war”, Times, 2 February 1916, 10; Bryant C. L. , “The Association of Public School Science Masters (1900–1919)”, School science review, i (1919), 1–6; idem, “Fifty years on”, School science review , xxxii (1950–51), 140–5; and Layton David , Interpreters of science: A history of the Association of Science Education (London, 1984). For context in the history of English pedagogy, see Dean W. D. , “H. A. L. Fisher, reconstruction and the development of the 1918 Education Act”, British journal of educational studies, xviii (1970), 259–76; Jenkins E. W. , From Armstrong to Nuffield: Studies in twentieth-century science education in England and Wales (London, 1979); Layton David , “Education in industrialized societies”, in Williams T. E. (ed.), A history of technology, iv/1 (Oxford, 1978), 138–71; idem, “The schooling of science in England”, in Macleod Roy Collins Peter (ed.), The parliament of science: The BAAS 1831–1981 (Northwood, 1981), 188–210; and Sherington Geoffrey , English education, social change, and the war 1911–1920 (Manchester, 1981).

Collini Stefan , “The idea of ‘character’ in Victorian political thought”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., xxxv (1985), 29–50; idem, Public moralists: Political thought and intellectual life in Britain (Oxford, 1991); idem, Winch Donald Burrow John , That noble science of politics: A study in nineteenth-century intellectual history (Cambridge, 1983), 151–9, 170–4, 185–205, 317–29; and Burrow John , A liberal descent: Victorian historians and the English past (Cambridge, 1981). On how such themes came to be adapted by biological humanists in the interwar era, see Smith Roger , “Biology and values in interwar Britain: C. S. Sherrington, Julian Huxley and the vision of progress”, Past and present, clxxviii (2003), 210–42.

Fisher H. A. L. , 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; and Temple William , presidential address to the education section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Times educational supplement, 7 September 1916, 113.

Brock William , H. E. Armstrong and the teaching of science, 1880–1930 (London, 1973); Selleck Richard , The new education 1870–1914 (London, 1968); and Gooday Graeme , “‘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.

Turner , op. cit. (ref. 4), 595.

Turner , op. cit. (ref. 4); Hull Andrew , “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; Heffernan Michael , “Professor Penck's bluff: Geography, espionage and hysteria in World War I”, Scottish geographical journal, cxvi (2000), 267–82; Lester Joseph , E. Ray Lankester and the making of modern British biology, ed. with additional material by Bowler Peter (Stanford in the Vale, 1995), 153–9; Armytage Harry Sir Richard Gregory: His life and work (London, 1957); Alter Peter , The reluctant patron: Science and the state in Britain, 1850–1920, transl. by Davies A. (Oxford and New York, 1987); and Gregory Richard , Discovery, or the spirit and service of science (London, 1916). For Lankester, see also his letter to the editor, Times, 14 January 1916, 9. On connexions between scientific research and imperial ambitions, note also Schaffer Simon , “Empires of physics”, in Staley Richard (ed.), The physics of empire (Cambridge, 1994), 87–109.

Gardner Percy , letter to the editor, Times educational supplement, 4 April 1916, 49; Page T. E. , letter to the editor, Times, 4 February 1916, 7 (reprinted in Times educational supplement, 7 March 1916, 29); and Weekley Ernest , Surnames (London, 1916), 22–23. On the conservative humanism in which some of these pronouncements were rooted, see Turner Frank , The Greek heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT, 1981), 17–61.

Livingstone Richard , A defence of classical education (London, 1916), 28.

Ibid., 52–54; note also Collini Stefan , “‘On highest authority’: The literary critic and other aviators in early twentieth-century Britain”, in Ross Dorothy (ed.), Modernist impulses in the human sciences 1870–1930 (Baltimore and London, 1994), 152–70.

For the ancient theme of potential frictions between knowledge and goodness, see Mason John Hope , “The character of creativity: Two traditions”, History of European ideas, ix (1988), 697–715; also Hollinger David , “Justification by verification: The scientific challenge to the moral authority of Christianity in modern America”, in Lacey Michael J. (ed.), Religion and twentieth-century American intellectual life (Cambridge, 1989), 116–35, pp. 121–2. For a range of interpretations of how knowledge can be literally embodied, see Lawrence Christopher Shapin Steven (ed.), Science incarnate: Historical embodiments of natural knowledge (Chicago, 1998); Smith , op. cit. (ref. 7); and 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. For a contemporary reminder that true education awakened affection for great ideals of conduct, see Conway R. S. , “Education and British ideals”, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1915 (London, 1916), 745.

Sampson George , English for the English (Cambridge, 1921); Baldick Chris , The social mission of English criticism, 1848–1932 (Oxford, 1983), 87–89, 200; Mulhern Francis , The moment of Scrutiny (London, 1979); and Willey Basil , The ‘Q’ tradition: An inaugural lecture (Cambridge, 1946), 10.

Winter Jay , “British national identity and the First World War”, in Green S. J. D. Whiting R. C. (ed.), The boundaries of the state in modern Britain (Cambridge, 1996), 261–77, p. 266.

Schäfer Edward , letter to the editor, Times educational supplement, 7 March 1916, 30; Livingstone , op. cit. (ref. 13), 27 et passim; [An Englishman], “The training of judgment”, Times educational supplement , 4 April 1916, 48; Weekley , op. cit. (ref. 12), 22–23; and Gardner , op. cit. (ref. 12) (my emphasis).

Wallace Stuart , War and the image of Germany: British academics 1914–1918 (Edinburgh, 1988), 38–39; Baldick , op. cit. (ref. 16), 87–92, 106ff; and Parker Christopher , The English historical tradition since 1850 (Edinburgh, 1990), 152ff.

Murray Gilbert , “German ‘Kultur’, III — German scholarship”, Quarterly review, ccxxiii (1915), 330–9; Denis Brogan, review of Ritchie A. D. , Science and politics (London, 1947), Nature, 3 January 1948, 6–7; Pound Ezra , “Provincialism the enemy”, New age, 12 July 1917, reprinted in idem, Selected prose: 1909–1965 (London, 1973), 159–60; and Sadler Michael , “The strengths and weaknesses of German education”, in Paterson William (ed.), German culture: The contribution of the Germans to knowledge, literature, art and life (London, 1915), 301–14, p. 301. Note also Pollard Albert Frederick , “History and science: A rejoinder”, History, i (1916), 25–39.

Yeo Richard , “Scientific method and the image of science, 1831–1890”, in Macleod Collins (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 6), 65–88; idem, “Scientific method and the rhetoric of science in Britain, 1830–1917”, in idem and Schuster John (ed.), The politics and rhetoric of scientific method: Historical studies (Dordrecht, Boston and Lancaster, 1986), 259–97; Heyck T. W. , The transformation of intellectual life in Victorian England (London, 1982), chap. 4; White , op. cit. (ref. 3); and Hollinger , op. cit. (ref. 15). Specifically on Whewell, see Yeo Richard , “William Whewell on the history of science”, Metascience, v (1987), 25–40; and Williams Perry , “Passing on the torch: Whewell's philosophy and the principles of English education”, in Fisch Menachem Schaffer Simon (ed.), William Whewell: A composite portrait (Oxford, 1991), 117–47.

Webb Beatrice , My apprenticeship (London, 1926), 131.

Armstrong Henry , The teaching of scientific method and other papers on education (London, 1910), 236, 241, 255; see also Armstrong at the Newcastle meeting of the BAAS, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1889 (London, 1890), 229.

Brock , op. cit. (ref. 9), 6, 21; Selleck , op. cit. (ref. 9), 26, 45–46, 126f, 147; and Rippa S. A. , Education in a free society, 5th edn (New York and London, 1984), 221.

For a discussion of holistic models of pedagogy see Selleck , op. cit. (ref. 9), 210ff; Jenkins , op. cit. (ref. 6), 46–47, 64–65; Brock , op. cit. (ref. 9); and Anon., Report of the conference on new ideals in education, Stratford upon Avon, 14–21 August 1915 ([London, 1916]). Note also Dunkel H. B. , Herbart and Herbartianism: An educational ghost story (Chicago and London, 1970).

Spearman Charles , The abilities of man: Their nature and measurement (London, 1927), 38f; similarly, Turner Dorothy M. , History of science leaching in England (London, 1927), 189.

Selleck , op. cit. (ref. 9), 212. Even committed critics of the faculty model, such as the Herbartian Frank Hayward, could at times be caught using its language; see Hayward Frank Langdon-Davies B. N. , Democracy and the press (London, 1919), 1.

See e.g. Fisher , op. cit. (ref. 8); and Badash Lawrence , “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.

Badash , op. cit. (ref. 28), 93 et passim, 98–100; Heffernan , op. cit. (ref. 11), 161f; and Alter , op. cit. (ref. 11), 199.

Schaffer Simon , “Scientific discoveries and the end of natural philosophy”, Social studies of science, xvi (1986), 387–420, pp. 406–9. Specifically on the use of the concept of genius in debates on the morality of great discoverers, see Yeo Richard , “Genius, method, and morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760–1860”, Science in context, ii (1988), 257–84. On the relations between Priestley's philosophy of knowledge and his theology, see McEvoy John , “Joseph Priestley, ‘aerial philosopher’: Metaphysics and methodology in Priestley's chemical thought, from 1762 to 1781”, Ambix, xxv (1979), 1–55. Note also Macleod Christine , “Concepts of invention and the patent controversy in Victorian Britain”, in Fox R. (ed.), Technological change: Methods and themes in the history of technology (Amsterdam, 1996), 137–53.

Hollinger , op. cit. (ref. 15), 128–9; and Gregory , op. cit. (ref. 11), 11, 12, 54–55, 85, 239.

Gregory , op. cit. (ref. 11), 85.

Indeed late nineteenth-century ideals of scientific objectivity were deeply, ineradically, connected to a morality of supreme self-restraint: See Daston L. Galison P. , “The image of objectivity”, Representations, xl (1992), 81–128.

Gregory Richard , “The message of science”, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1921 (London, 1922), 488–97, pp. 490f.

Hollinger , op. cit. (ref. 15), 128; and Armytage , op. cit. (ref. 11).

Russell A. S. , “Editorial notes”, Discovery, i (1920), 3–4; Armytage , op. cit. (ref. 11), 70–71 et passim; and Kenyon Frederick , Education, scientific and humane: A report of the proceedings of the Council for Humanistic Studies (London, 1917).

Times educational supplement, 9 November 1916, 201 (my emphasis).

Lankester E. Ray , “The word humanism”, Times educational supplement, 16 November 1916, 209–10; 30 November 1916, 225; 14 December 1916, 241–2; Temple , op. cit. (ref. 8); and Kenyon , op. cit. (ref. 36).

Alter , op. cit. (ref. 11), 191–213; and Hull , op. cit. (ref. 11).

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.

On drafting the memorandum see Bryant , op. cit. (ref. 6, 1919), 4; idem, op. cit. (ref. 6, 1950–51), 142; and Layton , op. cit. (ref. 6, 1984), 193. On Osler's address to the Association of Public School Science Masters, see Cushing Harvey , The life of Sir William Osler (2 vols, Oxford, 1925), ii, 508–9. For the counter-memorandum, see “A plea for tradition”, Times, 4 May 1916, 6; reprinted in Kenyon , op. cit. (ref. 36), 5–8.

Allbutt Clifford , “Science in the school”, Times educational supplement, 16 November 1916, 205–6.

Osler William , “The old humanities and the new science: The presidential address delivered before the Classical Association at Oxford, May 1919”, British medical journal, 5 July 1919, 1–7; and Kenyon Frederick , as cited by Cushing, op. cit. (ref. 41), ii, 648.

Gunther R. T. , Early science in Oxford, i: Chemistry, mathematics, physics and surveying (Oxford, 1923), p. vi; Cushing , op. cit. (ref. 41), ii, 648–9; Webster Charles , “Medicine a social history: Changing ideas on doctors and patients in the age of Shakespeare”, in Stevenson Lloyd G. (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; Mayer A.-K. , “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; and Bliss Michael , William Osler: A life in medicine (Oxford, 1999). Further on scientific intellectuals' recommendation for a new humanism, note Lankester E. Ray , “The aim of education”, in idem (ed.), Natural science and the classical system in education: Essays old and new (London, 1918), 250–68; Alfred North Whitehead, presidential address to the Mathematical Association of England, 1916, in idem, The aims of education (London, 1929), 1–23; idem, as cited in Kenyon , op. cit. (ref. 36), 10–11; and idem, “Science in general education”, in Hill A. (ed.), Second Congress of the Universities of the Empire, 1921 (London, 1921), 31–39.

Sarton George , “Le nouvel humanisme”, Scientia, xxiii (1918), 161–75; Cantor Geoffrey , “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; Mayer , op. cit. (ref. 44); 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).

Gregory , op. cit. (ref. 11), p. v; Lankester , op. cit. (ref. 38); Lankester in Freeman Hayward (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 27), pp. xlvi–vii.

Paterson , op. cit. (ref. 20), pp. vi–vii; similarly Murray , op. cit. (ref. 20); Ramsay William , “German ‘Kultur’, I — As illustrated by German science”, Quarterly review, ccxxiii (1915), 313–22.

This is detailed in Armytage, op. cit. (ref. 11), 71–72, and in Kenyon , op. cit. (ref. 36), 13–19. Note also contemporary exhortation, on the part of salient humanists, to substitute co-operation for hostility. See Kenyon Frederick , Education, secondary and university: A report of conferences between the Council for Humanistic Studies and the conjoint Board of Scientific Societies (London, 1919); and MacKail J. W. , “The classics in education”, review of Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 13), Times literary supplement , 18 January 1917, 30.

Presidential address to the Classical Association (summary), Times, 6 January 1917, 10 (for the extended version, see Bryce Viscount , “Our educational future. I. — The worth of ancient literature to the modern world”, The fortnightly review, 2 April 1917, 551–66); and Mackail , op. cit. (ref. 48).

Mackail J. W. , The alliance of Latin and English studies (London, 1923), 4.

“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.

Ibid., 157, 197.

Nunn T. Percy , “Science”, in Adams John Sir (ed.), The new teaching (London, 1918), 154–98, pp. 160, 161, 168; Sanderson F. W. , “Science in educational reconstruction”, in Lankester, op. cit. (ref. 44), 207–49; and Mayer , op. cit. (ref. 44), 456–62.

Bryant , op. cit. (ref. 6, 1950–51), 143–4.

Anon., “Science for all: A plea for general science”, School science review, ii (1920), 197–202; Brock , op. cit. (ref. 9), 40ff; and Layton , op. cit. (ref. 6, 1984), 196.

Wells H. G. , Experiment in autobiography: Discoveries and conclusions of a very ordinary brain (since 1866) (2 vols, London, 1934), ii, chap. 5; and Webb , op. cit. (ref. 22). On Oundle, see Wells H. G. , 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.

“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; “The position of natural science in education”, Nature , 18 April 1918, 135–6; and Armytage , op. cit. (ref. 11), 80.

Gregory Richard , “Substance and method of science teaching”, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1919 (London, 1920), 354–5.

Gregory Richard , “Educational and school science”, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1922 (London, 1923), 204–18, p. 207; and Anon., op. cit. (ref. 55), 201. Note also Singer Charles , “Scientific humanism”, The realist, i (1929), 12–18, p. 18.

For an assessment of the impact of this debate on educational arrangements, see Waring Mary , Social pressures and curriculum innovation: A study of the Nuffield Science Teaching Project (London, 1979), 30f, and McCulloch Gary , “A technocratic vision: The ideology of school science reform in Britain in the 1950s”, Social studies of science, xviii (1988), 703–24; on the binary economy of two-cultures arguments, see Jones Caroline A. Galison Peter , “Introduction”, in idem (ed.), Picturing science producing art (New York and London, 1998), 1–23; further, Forgan Sophie , “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; Mayer A.-K. , “‘A combative sense of duty’: Englishness and the scientists”, in Mayer A.-K. Lawrence Christopher (ed.), Regenerating England: Science, medicine and culture in inter-war Britain (Amsterdam, 2000), 67–106; Mayer A.-K. , “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; and 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.