Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture

Cantor Geoffrey , “The rhetoric of experiment”, in Gooding David Pinch T. and Schaffer S. (eds), The uses of experiment: Studies in the natural sciences (Cambridge, 1989), 159–80, p. 161. See also Varcoe Ian and Yearley Steven , “The centrality of science and technology”, in Varco I. McNeil Maureen and Yearley S. (eds), Deciphering science and technology: The social relations of expertise (London, 1990), 1–28, and Böhme Gernot , Coping with science (Boulder, Col., 1992).

See Porter Roy (ed.), The popularization of medicine, 1650–1850 (London, 1992). See also, Bynum W.F. and Porter Roy (eds), Medical fringe and medical orthodoxy, 1750–1850 (London, 1987); Cooter Roger (ed.), Studies in the history of alternative medicine (London, 1988); and the essays on ‘vulgarisation médical’ by Corinne Verry-Jolivet and Jacques Poirrier in Maladies médecines et sociétes: Approches historiques pour le présent (Histoire au Présent, i; Paris, 1993). For American sources and studies, see Anne Hudson Jones, “Medicine and the physician in popular culture”, in Inge M. Thomas (ed.), Handbook of American popular culture, iii (Westport, Conn., 1981), 183–203.

This is slightly less true for North America than Europe. For a guide to American sources, see Woodlief Annette M. , “Science in popular culture”, in Inge, op. cit. (ref. 2), iii, 429–58. The boundaries between ‘science’ and ‘medicine’ are of course often indistinct. Is popular information on sexuality, for instance, ‘science’ or ‘medicine’ whether presented as physiological knowledge or not? For present purposes, we use ‘science’ conventionally for bodies of ‘natural’ knowledge ranging from botany to physics.

See, in particular, Evans Raymond J. , “The diffusion of science: The geographical transmission of natural philosophy in the English provinces, 1660–1760”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1982; Jacob Margaret , The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1679–1720 (Hassocks, Sussex, 1976); and idem, The cultural meaning of the scientific revolution (Philadelphia, 1987). For one of the pioneering studies of science in the industrial revolution, see Thackray Arnold , “Natural knowledge in cultural context: The Manchester model”, American historical review, lxxix (1974), 672–709. For much of the subsequent literature, see Inkster Ian and Morrell Jack (eds), Metropolis and province (London, 1983).

See, for example, Stewart Larry , “Public lectures and private patronage in Newtonian England”, Isis, lxxvii (1986), 47–58; idem, “The selling of Newton: Science and technology in early eighteenth-century England”, Journal of British studies, xxv (1986), 178–92; Secord James A. , “Newton in the nursery: Tom Telescope and the philosophy of tops and balls, 1761–1838”, History of science, xxiii (1985), 127–51; Ellegard Alvar , Darwin and the general reader (Chicago, 1990); Kelly Alfred , The descent of Darwin: The popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860–1914 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1981); Weikart Richard , “The origins of social Darwinism in Germany, 1859–1895”, Journal of the history of ideas, liv (1993), 469–88; Russett Cynthia E. , Darwin in America (San Francisco, 1976); Pancaldi Giuliano , Darwin in Italy, transl. by Morelli R. B. (Bloomington, Ind., 1991); and Glick Thomas F. (ed.), The comparative reception of Darwinism (Austin, Texas, 1972).

While several publications have sought to comment on science in the media, few provide historical perspectives or searching critical analysis. See, for example, Burkett Warren , News reporting: Science, medicine and high technology (Ames, Ind., 1986); Nelkin Dorothy , Selling science: How the press covers science and technology (New York, 1987); Perlman David , “Science and the mass media”, in Holton G. and Blanpied W. (eds), Science and its public: The changing relationship (Dordrecht and Boston, 1976), 245–60; Farago Peter , Science and the media (Oxford, 1976); Goodfield June , Reflections on science and the media (Washington, D.C., 1981); Jones Greta , The presentation of science by the media (Leicester, 1978); Goldsmith Maurice , The science critic: A critical analysis of the popular presentation of science (London, 1986); Tuchman Gay , Making news: A study in the construction of reality (New York, 1978); Schlesinger Philip , Putting “reality” together (London, 1987); Krieghbaum Hillier , Science and the mass media (London, 1968); Myers Greg , “Every picture tells a story”, Human studies, xi (1988), 235–69; and Silverstone Roger , Framing science (London, 1985). With regard to the history of science education, exceptions include Inkster Ian , “The public lecture as an instrument of science education for adults”, Paedagogica historica, xx (1981), 85–112, and Layton David , Science for the people: The origins of the school curriculum in England (London, 1973).

As Ann B. Shteir has remarked, in one of the exceptions to scholarship on eighteenth-century science, “popular science writing remains largely unexplored terrain. Women's popular science writing is even less studied”: “Botanical dialogues: Maria Jacson and women's popular science writing in England”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxiii (1990), 301–16, p. 301. See also, Abir-Am Pnina and Outram Dorinda (eds), Uneasy careers and intimate lives: Women in science, 1789–1979 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987). For a largely anecdotal history of women's involvement with popular science, see Phillips Patricia , The scientific lady: A social history of woman's scientific interests, 1520–1918 (London, 1990).

Silverstone Roger , “Science and the media: The case of television”, in Doorman S. J. (ed.), Images of science: Scientific practice and the public (Aldershot, 1989), 187–211, p. 188.

Shapin Steven , “Science and its public”, in Olby R. C. (eds), Companion to the history of modern science (London, 1990), 990–1007, p. 994. See also Morrell Jack , “Brains of Britain”, Social studies of science, xvi (1986), 739–40. Bourdieu Pierre , for instance, in his vast ethnography of contemporary France scarcely refers to science: Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste , transl. by Nice R. (London, 1984).

For one aspect of resistance, see Inkster Ian , “London science and the Seditious Meetings Act of 1817”, The British journal for the history of science, xii (1979), 192–6; Weindling Paul , “Science and sedition: How effective were the acts licensing lectures and meetings, 1795–1819?”, ibid., xiii (1980), 139–53; and Inkster Ian , “Seditious science: A reply to Paul Weindling”, ibid., xiv (1981), 181–7. For another aspect, see Desmond Adrian , “Artisan resistance and evolution in Britain, 1819–1848”, Osiris , n.s., iii (1987), 77–110.

Porter Roy , “The history of science and the history of society”, in Olby (eds), op. cit. (ref. 9), 32–46, p. 43. On the decline of interest in science among the middle class in Victorian Manchester, see Wach Howard M. , “Culture and the middle classes: Popular knowledge in industrial Manchester”, Journal of British studies, xxvii (1988), 375–404.

However, see Jones William Powell , “The idea of the limitations of science from Prior to Blake”, Rice University studies in English literature, i (1961), 97–114, and Nowotny Helga and Rose Hilary (eds), Counter-movements in the sciences: The sociology of the alternatives to big science (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, iii; Dordrecht and Boston, 1979). Rather more attention has been devoted to opposition to medicine and technology than to science. For a exemplary feminist study of turn-of-the-century hostility to medical science which draws heavily on contemporary novels, see Lansbury Coral , The old brown dog: Women workers and vivisection in Edwardian Britain (Madison, Wisc., 1985). For aspects of anti-technology, see Randall Adrian , “Work, culture and resistance to machinery in the west of England woolen industry”, in Hudson Pat (ed.), Regions and industries: A perspective on the industrial revolution in Britain (Cambridge, 1989), 175–98; and Mann Thomas , Doctor Faustus , transl. by Lowe-Porter H. T. (London, 1949).

Cooter Roger , The cultural meaning of popular science: Phrenology and the organization of consent in nineteenth-century Britain (Cambridge, 1984), 2.

‘Popular science’ does however feature as one of the sub-headings in the “Bibliography: Relations of literature and science, 1989–1990”, in the new journal Configurations, i (1993), 283–319.

Indeed, all the more so in view of the embrace of academics of many sorts in the legitimizing efforts of the journal Public understanding of science (established in 1992). In stark contrast is the journal Science as culture, which (extending from Radical science journal) was established in 1987 in order to popularize an accessible, critical stance on science and technology. For a recent review of the history of ideas about the public understanding of science and a critique of the dominant ‘deficit’ model (i.e., public ignorance to be remedied by instilling scientific literacy), see Layton David , Inarticulate science? Perspectives on the public understanding of science and some implications for science education (London, 1993).

Turner Frank , “Public science in Britain, 1880–1919”, Isis, lxxi (1980), 589–608, p. 601. Turner's pioneering article is of course an exception to the historiography of popular science's neglect; however, the neglect of Turner's article is an interesting point in itself.

Thus far, in Britain, the evidence is doubtful. See the response of Mulvey John (secretary of Save British Science) to the British Government's White Paper on Science: “Teetering before the rim”, The observer, 30 May 1993, 64.

Yearley Steven , Times higher education supplement , 4 December 1992, 28. For a more extended sociological critique, see Collins Harry , “Certainty and the public understanding of science: Science on television”, Social studies of science, xvii (1987), 689–714, and idem, “Public experiments and displays of virtuosity: The core-set revisited”, Social studies of science, xviii (1988), 725–48. For the PUS agenda see also the journal Science and public affairs; and Evered David and O'Connor Maeve (eds), Communicating science to the public (Chichester and New York, 1987). The PUS advocates can be seen as the successors to those in science, acting as its elder statesmen, who publicly proclaimed the essential neutrality and goodness of science and scientists, whilst condemning its social and political abuse. See, for example, Wolpert Lewis , “The social obligations of scientists”, the 20th J. D. Bernal Lecture, delivered at Birkbeck College, 1989.

A recent exhibition at the science museums in London and Manchester on “Ozone: A cover story” was sponsored by Nuclear Electric plc. On the successful sell to the media of gene splicing, in the face of mounting legislative opposition, see Krimsky Sheldon , Genetic alchemy: The social history of the recombinant DNA controversy (Cambridge, Mass., 1982).

Basalla George , “Pop science: The depiction of science in popular culture”, in Holton and Blanpied (eds), op. cit. (ref. 6), 261–78; Lecourt Dominique , Proletarian science? The case of Lysenko , transl. by Brewster Ben (London, 1977); MacIntyre Stuart , A proletarian science (London, 1980). We know of no study of ‘populist science’ as such, though much of the work on social Darwinism would fit comfortably within it.

Hall A. Rupert , “Merton revisited, or science and society in the seventeenth century”, History of science, ii (1963), 1–16; see also his “Microscopic analysis and the general picture”, Times literary supplement, 26 April 1974, 437–8.

For a simple review, see Barnes Barry , “Thomas Kuhn”, in Skinner Quentin (ed.), The return of grand theory in the human sciences (Cambridge, 1985), 83–100.

Hill Christopher , “Science and magic in seventeenth-century England”, in Samuel Raphael and Jones Gareth Stedman (eds), Culture, ideology and politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm (London, 1983), 176–93, especially pp. 186–90; and Thomas Keith , Religion and the decline of magic (London, 1971). For similar for the nineteenth century, see Obelkevich Jim , Religion and rural society: South Lindsey, 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976), 301 et passim; and Vincent David , “The natural world”, in his Literacy and popular culture, England 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 1989). For a refutation for the early modern period, see Webster Charles , From Paracelsus to Newton (Cambridge, 1982), ch. 4. A more complex understanding of natural knowledge is presented in Keith Thomas's later work, Man and the natural world: Changing attitudes in England, 1500–1800 (Harmondsworth, 1984).

Sheets-Pyenson Susan , “Low scientific culture in London and Paris, 1820–1875”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1976; idem, “Popular science periodicals in Paris and London: The emergence of a low scientific culture, 1820–1875”, Annals of science, xlii (1985), 549–72. See also Moss Henry , “Scientists and sans-culotte: The spread of scientific literacy in the Revolutionary Year II”, Fundamenta scientiae, iv (1983), 101–15; Kitteringham G. S. , “Studies in the popularisation of science in England, 1800–30”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Kent, 1981; and Hinton D. A. , “Popular science in England, 1830–1870”, unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Bath, 1979. For a well referenced account of mechanics’ institutes, see Inkster Ian , “The social context of an educational movement: A revisionist approach to the English mechanics’ institutes, 1820–50”, Oxford review of education, ii (1976), 277–307. On science in provincial culture see Inkster and Morrell, op. cit. (ref. 4); and Inkster Ian , “Cultural enterprise: Science, steam intellect and social class in Rochdale circa 1833–1900”, Social studies of science, xviii (1988), 291–330.

For example, Barnes Barry , “On the reception of scientific beliefs”, in Barnes (ed.), Sociology of science (Harmondsworth, 1972), 269–91; idem, Scientific knowledge and sociological theory (London, 1974).

Whitley Richard , “Knowledge producers and knowledge acquirers: Popularisation as a relation between scientific fields and their publics”, in Shinn Terry and Whitley Richard (eds), Expository science: Forms and functions of popularisation (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, ix; Dordrecht and Boston, 1985), 3–28. More recently, the sociologist Stephen Hilgartner has focused on the political uses for scientists (and others who derive their authority from technical expertise) of the culturally-dominant view of the popularization of science as ‘genuine’ knowledge ‘distorted’: “The dominant view of popularization: Conceptual problems, political uses”, Social studies of science, xx (1990), 519–39. Our thanks to Nick Hopwood for alerting us to this interesting paper.

See, for example, Lemaine G. (eds), Perspectives on the emergence of scientific disciplines (The Hague and Paris, 1976). For a fairly full list of other writings on this subject, see Shapin Steven , “Discipline and bounding: The history and sociology of science as seen through the externalism–internalism debate”, History of science, xxx (1992), 333–69, p. 368, note 7.

Typically Michael Mulkay , in The social process of innovation: A study in the sociology of science (London, 1972), while admitting that little was known on the passage of science to the wider community, concentrated on “the social processes whereby scientific information is generated, [and] accepted as valid by the research community” (p. 7).

Latour Bruno , “Postmodern? No, simply amodern! Steps towards an anthropology of science”, Studies in the history and philosophy of science, xxi (1990), 145–71, p. 146.

For exemplification, see Knorr-Cetina Karin D. , “The ethnographic study of scientific work: Towards a constructivist interpretation of science”, in Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay Michael (eds), Science observed: Perspectives on the social study of science (London, 1983), 115–40; and Latour Bruno , “Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world”, ibid., 141–70.

Cited in Gingras Yves , “Following scientists through society? — Yes, but at arm's length!”, Cahiers d'épistémologie , no. cxxxiv (Université du Quebec, 1992), especially p. 12. For another forceful critique, see Amsterdamska Olga , “You are surely joking Mr. Latour”, Science, technology and human values, xv (1990), 495–504.

On the fructifying effect of sociological approaches in the history of science, see Secord James A. , “Natural history in depth”, Social studies of science, xv (1985), 181–200, p. 182. See also Shapin Steven , “History of science and its sociological reconstruction”, History of science, xx (1982), 157–211, and Miller D. P. , “Social history of British science: After the harvest?”, Social studies of science, xiv (1984), 115–35.

Shapin Steven , “Social uses of science”, in Rousseau G. S. and Porter Roy (eds), The ferment of knowledge: Studies in the historiography of eighteenth-century science (Cambridge, 1980), 93–139, p. 95n. As he points out, “the term is preferred to ‘reception’ or ‘diffusion’, which inappropriately suggest passive processes”.

Curry Patrick , Prophecy and power: Astrology in early modern England (Oxford, 1989); idem, “Astrology in early modern England: The making of a vulgar knowledge”, in Pumfrey Stephen Rossi P. L. , and Slawinski M. (eds), Science, culture and popular belief in Renaissance Europe (Manchester, 1991), 274–91; Desmond Adrian , Archetypes and ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London, 1850–1875 (London, 1982); idem, “Artisan resistance” (ref. 10); idem, The politics of evolution: Morphology, medicine, and reform in radical London (Chicago, 1989); Yeo Richard , “Science and intellectual authority in mid-nineteenth-century Britain: Robert Chambers and Vestiges of the natural history of creation”, Victorian studies, xxviii (1984), 5–31; idem, Defining science: William Whewell, natural knowledge, and public debate in early Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 1993) — a study so recent as to be unavailable at the time of writing; Secord James , “Extraordinary experiment: Electricity and the creation of life in Victorian England”, in Gooding (eds), op. cit. (ref. 1), 337–83; idem, “Dining in the iguanodon: The anatomy of a meal”, discussion paper. Although we have grouped these historians, the grouping is to some extent arbitrary. Like Shapin and Schaffer, their interests have developed and shifted over the years so that several different categorizations are possible.

Desmond , “Artisan resistance” (ref. 10), 78.

Secord , “Natural history in depth” (ref. 32), 194.

Secord James , “Evolution for the people” discussion paper.

This is less true of Curry's work on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century astrology, which emphasises the resilience of astrology in popular culture.

Schaffer Simon and Shapin Steven , Leviathan and the air pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, N. J., 1985); Gooding David , “In nature's school: Faraday as an experimentalist”, in Gooding D. and James F. (eds), Faraday rediscovered (London, 1985), 105–36; Golinski Jan , Science as public culture: Chemistry and enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992).

Stewart Larry , The rise of public science: Rhetoric, technology, and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992).

Golinski , op. cit. (ref. 39), 4. Shapin's concern in “Science and its public” (ref. 9) is more with the historical processes by which the two entities, ‘science’ and ‘the public’, came to be constituted as separate.

On the latter in particular, see Shapin Steven , “The house of experiment in seventeenth-century England”, Isis, lxxix (1988), 373–404, p. 373. See also Morus Iwan Rhys , “Currents from the underworld: Electricity and the technology of display in early Victorian England”, Isis, lxxxiv (1993), 50–69, and idem, “Different experimental lives: Michael Faraday and William Sturgeon”, History of science, xxx (1992), 1–28. One might compare this approach of historians of science to that of other historians on popular reading, reader response theory, and the history of the book and library catalogues. See: Eisenstein Elizabeth L. , The printing press as an agent of change: Communications and cultural transformations in early-modern Europe (2 vols, Cambridge, 1979); Allen James S. , In the public eye: A history of reading in modern France, 1800–1940 (Princeton, 1991); and Fissell Mary , “Readers, texts, and contexts: Vernacular medical works in early modern England”, in Porter (ed.), Popularization of medicine (ref. 2), 72–96, which also cites the important work in this area of Roger Chartier, Natalie Zemon Davis, Margaret Spufford, David Cressy and Stanley Fish. See also Eco Umberto , The role of the reader: Explorations in the semiotics of texts (Bloomington, Ind., 1979).

Schaffer Simon , “Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century”, History of science, xxi (1983), 1–43.

Contrast the lack of contemporary comment (even among the élite) on Robert Boyle's lectures of 1692–1714, as discussed by Holmes Geoffrey , “Science, reason and religion in the age of Newton”, The British journal for the history of science, xi (1978), 164–71, p. 169. Subsequent attention to the Boyle Lectures begs the question of how and why this occurred.

See, for example, Stubbs Henry , The plus ultra reduced to a non plus (London, 1670), and Jenner Mark , ‘“Another epocha’? Hartlib, John Lanyon and the improvement of London in the 1650s”, in Greengrass M. Leslie M. and Raylor T. (eds), The advancement of learning in the seventeenth century (Cambridge, forthcoming). On Swift's perception of science as “an ideological fantasia of power, language and knowledge”, see Christie John R. R. , “Laputa revisited”, in Christie and Shuttleworth Sally (eds), Nature transfigured: Science and literature, 1700–1900 (Manchester, 1989), 44–60. For aspects of the satirizing tradition in the twentieth century, see Shortland Michael , “Mad scientists and regular guys: Images of the expert in Hollywood films of the 1950s”, Program, papers, and abstracts for the joint BSHS-HSS Anglo-American conference (Manchester, 1988), 291–8; and Basalla , op. cit. (ref. 20). It goes almost without saying that the parodying of science requires some understanding of certain textual characteristics of natural knowledge/science publications.

Golinski Jan , “The theory of practice and the practice of theory: Sociological approaches in the history of science”, Isis, lxxxi (1990), 492–505, pp. 495–6.

Habermas Jürgen , The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, transl. by Burger Thomas (Cambridge and Oxford, 1992), first published in German in 1962.

This is not to claim that scientific discourse developed exclusively within such a public sphere. Many early scientific institutions, particularly those modelled on the Paris Académie des Sciences, existed within a traditional, state-sponsored, non-oppositional domain, and hence complicate a Habermasian reading. We are grateful to John Christie for this point.

As, for example, in the two volumes of his Theory of communicative action (Boston, 1984 and 1987). A useful introduction is provided in Brand Arie , The force of reason: An introduction to Habermas’ theory of communicative action (London, 1990). Relevant to the themes of authenticity, accountability, authority and science in political discourse is Ezrahi Yaron , The descent of Icarus: Science and the transformation of contemporary democracy (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).

See Calhoun Craig (ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); and Goodman Dena , “Public sphere and private life: Towards a synthesis of current historiographical approaches to the Old Regime”, History and theory, xxxi (1992), 1–20. For a critique of Habermas's understanding of the early modern bourgeoisie, see Bell David , “The ‘public sphere’, the state, and the world of law in eighteenth-century France”, French historical studies, xvii (1992), 915–34. See also, Holub Robert C. , Jürgen Habermas, critic in the public sphere (London, 1991); and Wahrman Dror , “National society, communal culture: An argument about the recent historiography of eighteenth-century Britain”, Social history, xvii (1992), 43–72.

See Ryan Mary P. , Women in public: Between banners and ballots, 1825–1880 (Baltimore, 1990), and Fraser Nancy , “Rethinking the public sphere”, Social text, xxv/xxvi (1990), 56–80. The main feminist application of Habermas's theory is Joan Landes, Women and the public sphere in the age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, N. Y., 1988). Criticisms of Landes are reviewed in Maza Sara , “Women, the bourgeoisie and the public sphere: Response to Daniel Gordon and David Bell”, French historical studies, xvii (1992), 935–53. Such criticism has its foundation in feminist writings on the construction of the private/public dichotomy. See, for example, Elshtain Jean Bethke , Public man, private woman: Women in social and political thought (Oxford, 1981); Davidoff Leonore and Hall Catherine , Family fortunes: Men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (London, 1987); and Gamarnikow Eva (eds), The public and the private (Aldershot, 1986). For an excellent historiographical review and critique of the separate spheres literature, see Vickery Amanda , “Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history”, Historical journal, xxxvi (1993), 383–414.

Golinski Jan , “Language, discourse and science”, in Olby (eds), op. cit. (ref. 9), 110–23, p. 116.

See: Bennett Tony (eds), Popular culture and social relations (Milton Keynes, 1986); Hall Stuart , “Notes on deconstructing ‘the popular’”, in Samuel Raphael (ed.), People's history and socialist theory (London, 1981), 227–40; Shiach Morag , Discourse on popular culture: Class, gender and history in cultural analysis, 1730 to the present (Cambridge and Oxford, 1989); Anderson Patricia , The printed image and the transformation of popular culture, 1790–1860 (Oxford, 1991). See also Ross Andrew , No respect: Intellectuals and popular culture (New York, 1989); idem, Strange weather: Culture, science and technology in the age of limits (London, 1991); Lowenthal Les , “Historical preface to the popular culture debate”, in Jacobs N. (ed.), Culture for the millions? (Boston, 1964), 28–42; and Hall David , “Introduction” to Kaplan Steven L. (ed.), Understanding popular culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century (Berlin, 1984), 5–18.

Harris David , From class struggle to the politics of pleasure: The effects of Gramscianism on cultural studies (London, 1992).

A partial exception is Logie Barrow, who comments on science in his “Determinism and environmentalism in socialist thought”, in Samuel and Jones Stedman (eds), op. cit. (ref. 23), 194–213; see also his Independent spirits: Spiritualism and English plebeians, 1850–1910 (London, 1986).

Darnton Robert , Mesmerism and the end of the enlightenment in France (Princeton, 1968).

Whitley and Shinn , op. cit. (ref. 26), p. vii.

Darnton Robert , The business of enlightenment: A publishing history of the ‘Encyclopédie’, 1775–1800 (London, 1979). Cf. Anderson , op. cit. (ref. 53), and Howsam Leslie , Cheap bibles: Nineteenth-century publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 1991).

Burke Peter , Popular culture in early modern Europe (London, 1978), p. xi.

See Topham Jonathan , “Science and popular education in the 1830s: The role of the Bridgewater treatises”, The British journal for the history of science, xxv (1992), 397–430. The middle-class consumption of science was not of course only private; indeed, the lines between public and private consumption are not so easily drawn. See Rudwick M. J. S. , “Charles Darwin in London: The integration of public and private science”, Isis, liii (1982), 186–206.

Orwell George , The collected essays, ii: 1940–43 (Harmondsworth, 1970), 170 and 236. For Orwell, the science-equals-progress myth was scotched by the war-time use of poison gas and airplanes for bombing. For Einstein and Freud, too, the equation of civilization with science was sundered by the First World War; see Pick Daniel , War machine: The rationalisation of slaughter in the modern age (New Haven, 1993). See also Veblen Thorstein , “The place of science in modern civilization” (1906), reprinted in his The place of science in modern civilization and other essays (New York, 1932); and Edgerton David , “British scientific intellectuals and the relations of science, technology and war”, in Forman Paul and Sánchez-Ron J. M. (eds), National military establishments and the advancement of science and technology: Studies in twentieth century history (Dordrecht, forthcoming).

Bourdieu Pierre , Outline of a theory of practice, transl. by Nice R. (Cambridge, 1977).

See Bottomore T. B. , Elites and society (Harmondsworth, 1966), 17–20. Legitimacy for such usage can be found in one of the definitions of ‘popular’ in the Oxford English dictionary: “pertaining to, or consisting of the common people, or the people as a whole as distinguished from any particular class.” This definition is verified in literature dating from 1548.

See Joravsky David , The Lysenko affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), and Lecourt, op. cit. (ref. 20). There is no reference to Lysenkoism in Andrews's James T. “N. A. Rubakin and the popularization of science in the post-October period”, Russian history, xvi (1989), 9–29 — a nevertheless useful paper on the overtly ideological uses of popular science.

Shiach, op. cit. (ref. 53), 8. See also Strauss Gerald , “The dilemma of popular history”, Past and present, no. 132 (1991), 130–49.

Shiach, op. cit. (ref. 53), 10. Furthermore, as Russell Berman has pointed out with regard to the current vogue for cultural studies among academics, it is sometimes imagined that “getting rid of elite texts is … the same as getting rid of the elite”. Berman questions the motives behind the discourse on popular culture, treating it, following Pierre Bourdieu, “as an artificial sign of distinction of a particular variant of the homo academicus”, i.e., as “an agenda for professional status — a New Class career strategy — and not very much concerned with anything like democracy”: “Popular culture and populist culture”, Telos, no. 82 (1991), 59–70. Other problems currently besetting the history of popular culture are raised by William Beik and Gerald Strauss in their debate on “The dilemma of popular history”, Past and present, no. 141 (1993), 207–15.

See the Introduction to Obelkevich Jim Roper L. and Samuel R. (eds), Disciplines of faith: Studies in religion, politics and patriarchy (London, 1987). See also McCalman Iain , Radical underworld: Prophets, revolutionaries and pornographers in London, 1795–1840 (Cambridge, 1988); idem, “Popular irreligion in early Victorian England: Infidel preachers and radical theatricality in 1830s London”, in Davis R. W. and Helmstadter R. J. (eds), Religion and irreligion in Victorian society (London, 1992), 51–67.

The study of the manufacture of false consciousness by the (mass) ‘culture industry’ was very much the concern of the Frankfurt School. See, for example, Adorno Theodor , The jargon of authenticity , transl. by Tarnowski Knut and Will Frederick (Evanston, Ill., 1973).

Relevant here is Handlin Oscar , “Ambivalence in the popular response to science”, in Barnes (ed.), Sociology of science (ref. 25), 253–68.

As in science, this is sometimes the path to innovation: See Mulkay , op. cit. (ref. 28).

Swift J. , “An argument against abolishing Christianity in England”, in his Prose works , ed. by Davis A. (Oxford, 1939), ii, 27, quoted in Burke , op. cit. (ref. 59), 58.

Theatrical analogies might also be included here. For a critique of this model for science popularization, see Lindqvist Svante , “The spectacle of science: An experiment in 1744 concerning the aurora borealis”, Configurations, i (1992), 57–94, especially pp. 88–89.

Davis Natalie Zemon , Society and culture in early modern France (Stanford, 1975), 225.

Chartier Roger , Cultural history: Between practices and representations (Cambridge, 1988). A contemporary ‘pop’ science example is to be found in the apparently long running and widely circulated underground re-writing and re-illustration of the television series “Star Trek” in terms of homoerotic pornography. See Penley Constance , “Brownian motion: Women, tactics and technology”, in Penley and Ross Andrew (eds), Techno-culture (Minneapolis, 1991), 135–61. Our thanks to John Christie for this reference.

Political economy, statistics, anthropology, etc. took their place alongside the natural sciences in works like the Bridgewater treatises, and were routinely discussed in Literary and Philosophical societies. Appropriately, scholars have included political economy within the ambit of science popularization. See, for example, Claeys Gregory , “The reaction to political economy in early nineteenth-century Britain: The case of ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ labour”, in Shinn and Whitley (eds), op. cit. (ref. 26), 119–36.

Ginzburg Carlo , The cheese and the worms: The cosmos of a sixteenth-century miller, transl. by John and Tedeschi Anne (London, 1980).

Wynne Brian , Risk management and hazardous wastes: Implementation and the dialectics of credibility (Berlin, 1987).

This theme is further explored in Blume Stuart (eds), The social direction of the public sciences: Causes and consequences of co-operation between scientists and non-scientific groups (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, xi; Dordrecht and Boston, 1987).

Callon Michel , “Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen”, in Law John (ed.), Power, action and belief: A new sociology of knowledge? (London, 1986); see also Callon Michel and Law John , “On interests and their transformation: Enrolment and counter-enrolment”, Social studies of science, xii (1982), 615–26.

Golinski , Science as public culture (ref. 39), 285.

Rossi Paolo , Francis Bacon: From magic to science (London, 1968).

See Turner Gerard L'E. (ed.), The patronage of science in the nineteenth century (Leyden, 1976). For more recent elaborations, see Biagioli Mario , “Galileo's system of patronage”, History of science, xxviii (1990), 1–62; idem, “Galileo the emblem maker”, Isis, lxxxi (1990), 230–58; idem, “Scientific revolution, social bricolage, and etiquette”, in Porter Roy and Teich Mikuláš (eds), The scientific revolution in national context (Cambridge, 1992), 11–54.

Snow C. P. , The two cultures and the Scientific Revolution (London, 1959); idem, Recent thoughts on the two cultures (London, 1961). As Christie and Shuttleworth indicate (op. cit. (ref. 45), “Introduction”, pp. 2–3), the ‘two cultures’ is more a consequence than a cause of the process of cultural mapping which insists on polarizing science and literature.

MacDonald Michael , “The secularization of suicide in England”, Past and present, no. 111 (1986), 50–100, p. 67. One such socially amphibious figure in science was Robert Hooke; see Pumfrey Stephen , ‘“Ideas above his station’: A social study of Hooke's curatorship of experiments”, History of science, xxix (1991), 1–44.

Shapin Steven , “A scholar and a gentleman: The problematic identity of the natural philosophical practitioner in early-modern England”, History of science, xxix (1991), 279–327.

Hunter Michael , Science and society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981); Wood Paul B. , “Methodology and apologetics: Thomas Sprat's ‘History of the Royal Society’”, The British journal for the history of science, xiii (1980), 1–26.

See: Macleod Roy , “The X-Club: A social network of science in Victorian England”, Notes & records of the Royal Society, xxiv (1970), 305–22; Barton Ruth , “An influential set of chaps: The X-Club and Royal Society politics, 1864–85”, The British journal for the history of science, xxiii (1990), 53–81; Turner , “Public science” (ref. 16); Macleod Roy and Collins P. (eds), The parliament of science: The British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–1981 (Northwood, 1981); and Morrell Jack and Thackray Arnold , Gentlemen of science: Early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981).

On this problem, see Shapin , “Science and its public” (ref. 9), 994–5; and Golinski , Science as public culture (ref. 39), 1.

Chartier Roger , “Culture as appropriation: Popular cultural uses in early modern France”, in Kaplan , op. cit. (ref. 53), 229–53.

Williamson Judith , “The problems of being popular”, New socialist, xli (1986), 14–15, cited in Shiach, op. cit. (ref. 53), 8.

Sabean David Warren , Power in the blood: Popular culture and village discourse in early modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), 221, n. 85.

Yeo Eileen and Yeo Stephen (eds), Popular culture and class conflict, 1590–1914: Explorations in the history of labour and leisure (Brighton, 1981), p. xi.

Stewart , Rise of public science (ref. 40), p. xxi.

We are grateful to Anne Secord for pointing out to us that our arbitrarily chosen juxtaposition of physics and cucumber growing is less arbitrary than we imagined: Not only does the growing of cucumbers and melons have a substantial place in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gardening books, but that history links in important ways to the language of class and scientising discourses around technologies of cultivation. See, for example, Rogers John , The vegetable cultivator (London, 1839), 173–4.

See Pumfrey , op. cit. (ref. 84).

See, for example, Rousseau G. S. , “Scientific books and their readers in the 18th century”, in Rivers Isobel (ed.), Books and their readers (New York, 1982), 197–255. See also the sources cited in refs 42, 101, 105.

Although this difficulty, and the dirtying of hands that it entails, might be adduced as a further reason for the neglect of the study of science in popular culture, this seems to us less a cause than a justification for the neglect. It has not deterred social and cultural historians of non-scientific ideas and practices; indeed, it is the challenge of ethno-history.

de Solla Price Derek , “The parallel structures of science and technology”, in Barnes Barry and Edge David (eds), Science in context: Readings in the sociology of science (Milton Keynes, 1982), 164–76, p. 169.

See: Findlen Paula , Possessing nature: Museums, collecting and scientific culture in early modern Italy (forthcoming); Jordanova Ludmilla , Sexual visions: Images of gender in science and medicine between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries (London and New York, 1989), 137 et passim; Secord , “Dining in the iguanodon” (ref. 34); Green David , “Veins of resemblance: Photography and eugenics”, Oxford art journal, vii (1984), 3–16; Edwards Steve , “The machine dialogue”, Oxford art journal, xiii (1990), 63–76; Vergo Peter (ed.), The new muscology (London, 1989); Coombes Annie , “Museums and the formation of national and cultural identities”, Oxford art journal, xi (1988), 57–68; idem, “For God and England: Contributions to an image of Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century”, Art history, viii (1985), 453–66. For an excellent critique of the superficial use of artifacts in historical study and ‘material culture studies’, see Lawrence Ghislaine , “The ambiguous artifact: Surgical instruments and the surgical past”, in Lawrence Christopher (ed.), Medical theory, surgical practice (London, 1992), 295–314. For a stunning account of the Great Exhibition, as literally a showcase in the experience and building of commodity culture, see Richards Thomas , The commodity culture in Victorian England: Advertising and spectacle, 1851–1914 (London, 1990), ch. 1: “The Great Exhibition of things”.

Stewart , Rise of public science (ref. 40), p. xix.

See Jonsson Inge , “Images of science in literature”, in Doorman (ed.), Images of science (ref. 8), 156–81. See also Chappie J. A. V. , Science and literature in the nineteenth century (London, 1986). Cf. Jordanova Ludmilla (ed.), Languages of nature: Critical essays on science and literature (London, 1986), and Hayles N. Katherine (ed.), Chaos and order: Complex dynamics in literature and science (Chicago, 1991).

Myers Greg , “Nineteenth-century popularizers of thermodynamics and the rhetoric of social prophecy”, Victorian studies, xxix (1985), 35–66, reprinted in Brantlinger Patrick (ed.), Energy and entropy: Science and culture in Victorian Britain (Bloomington, Ind., 1989). See also Myers , “Science for women and children: The dialogue of popular science in the nineteenth century”, in Christie and Shuttleworth (eds), Nature transfigured (ref. 45), 171–200.

Young R. M. , “Malthus and the evolutionists: The common context of biological and social theory” (1969), reprinted in Young , Darwin's metaphor: Nature's place in Victorian culture (Cambridge, 1985), ch. 2.

Smith Roger , Inhibition: History and meaning in the sciences of mind and brain (London, 1992).

Latour Bruno , “Pasteur on lactic acid yeast: A partial semiotic analysis”, Configurations, i (1993), 129–45. For further insights on deciphering science texts, see Brazerman C. , Shaping written knowledge (Madison, Wisc., 1988); Gross A. G. , The rhetoric of science (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); and Nash Christopher (ed.), Narratives in culture: The uses of storytelling in the sciences, philosophy and literature (London, 1990).

Geertz Clifford , Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology (New York, 1983), ch. 2.

Samuel Raphael , “Reading the signs”, History workshop journal, no. 32 (1991), 88–109, p. 88.