Manufacturing nature: science, technology and Victorian consumer culture

1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iwan Rhys Morus
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Public Place ◽  
The Public ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Science Technology

The public place of science and technology in Britain underwent a dramatic change during the first half of the nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy was still on the whole the province of a relatively small group ofaficionados. London possessed only one institution devoted to the pursuit of natural knowledge: the Royal Society. The Royal Society also published what was virtually the only journal dealing exclusively with scientific affairs: thePhilosophical Transactions. By 1851, when the Great Exhibition opened its doors in Hyde Park to an audience of spectators that could be counted in the millions, the pursuit of science as a national need, its relationship to industrial progress were acceptable, if not uncontested facts for many commentators.

Science in Nineteenth-Century England: Plural Configurations and Singular Politics

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Pickstone
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Professional Schools ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Victorian Science

This chapter discusses the sciences and their politics in the nineteenth-century. It characterises Victorian science, technology and medicine, and states how they relate to state institutions and to scientific professions. It begins by suggesting a model for the configurations of natural knowledge in the late eighteenth century. It then deals with sciences and institutions, suggesting that these disciplines owed much to French museums and professional schools, and to German universities. It also considers three generations of scientist: first, the Anglican gentlemen of the British Association of the Advancement of Science (BAAS) in the 1830s; secondly, T. H. Huxley and his associates from the 1850s; and thirdly, a few professors who developed research laboratories from the 1870s. It asks what they understood about the meanings of science as a claimed unity and how they relate to the social and political projects variously characteristic of each generation.

Patrons of the Nation

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Anton Howes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Social Barriers ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Académie Des Sciences ◽  
Active Pursuit

This chapter illustrates the eighteenth century as an age of improvement in which letters of scholars criss-crossed Europe and North America, even India or China, in an active pursuit and sharing of knowledge. It talks about the scholar's letters that transcended all political and social barriers and confirmed to a specific agenda set by Francis Bacon, an English politician and philosopher of the early seventeenth century. It also discusses the “Baconian programme,” which was aimed to accumulate and rigorously test knowledge. The chapter highlights the Baconian obsession with collection and cataloguing that was applied beyond natural philosophy, to history, archaeology, and ancient languages. It also mentions the founding of the “Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge” in 1660, as well as the establishment of the “Académie des Sciences” in France.

Martin Folkes

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
New Science ◽  
Definition Of

In 1750, Martin Folkes became the only individual who was President of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, and he contributed to efforts to unite both organizations. Although he failed, illness forcing him to resign both offices, this chapter outlines the book’s analysis of the ensuing disciplinary boundaries between the two organizations in the early Georgian era in the context of Folkes’s life and letters. While it is normally assumed that natural philosophy and antiquarianism are disciplines that were fast becoming disconnected in this period, this work will reconsider these assumptions. The Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries were nearly reunited for good reason. Both societies incorporated techniques and affinities from antiquarianism—natural history and landscape—and the ‘new science’—engineering principles, measurement, and empiricism. Using Folkes’s life and letters, this biography will examine the disciplinary boundaries between the humanities and sciences in early Georgian Britain and reassess the extent to which the separation of these ‘two cultures’ developed in this era. It will also consider to what extent Folkes continued the Newtonian programme in mathematics, optics, and astronomy on the Continent. In this manner, the work will refine its definition of Newtonianism and its scope in the early eighteenth century, elucidating and reclaiming the vibrant research programme that Folkes promoted in the period of English science least well understood between the age of Francis Bacon and the present.

Halley’s Atheism and the end of the world

1977 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-40 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
The Public ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Ecclesiastical Authority ◽  
The World ◽  
Consistent Picture ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
New Evidence

Edmond Halley’s views on theology and natural philosophy have often drawn puzzled attention both from his contemporaries and from subsequent scholars. There has seemed to be a contrast between some public statements he made when under pressure from ecclesiastical authority, and his continued, and privately-held, faith in the over-arching relevance of science (1). However, it now emerges from some unpublished papers which Halley read to the Royal Society in the 1690s that he made public his own debate over such issues as the eternity of the world. This new evidence gives us a much more consistent picture of Halley’s work, and it refutes the view that there were two Halleys—the public orthodox face and the private heterodox one. It is true that the work of Edmond Halley presents us with a picture of considerable diversity. Nevertheless, throughout the 1690s he was primarily concerned with an investigation of Earth history independently of scriptural authority, and this gave some unity to his varied researches. However, there were both ideological and institutional problems with such a programme. The Anglican establishment of the period after 1688 was filled with a sense of threat. This led to a series of statements antipathetic to Halley’s attitude, including a devaluation of the power of unaided reason and an emphasis on the power of God’s Providence. Halley’s failure to obtain the Savilian Chair of Astronomy in 1691/2 was due in part, perhaps, to this antipathy. Yet this failure was also precipitated by the personal antagonism aroused by Halley’s jocular style, and the innate irascibility of Flamsteed. Because of these other sources of controversy the exact nature of Halley’s atheism remains confused. Even his identification with the ‘infidel mathematician’ of Berkeley’s Analyst is problematic. Yet the fact is that Halley took these charges seriously enough to spend several years working to show that one of them was unjustified. He had been accused of believing that the world would continue for eternity, and he was to try and show that it must, in the end, come to a halt.

scholarly journals London 1600–1800: communities of natural knowledge and artificial practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-196
Author(s):  
JIM BENNETT ◽  
REBEKAH HIGGITT
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Public ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Culture ◽  
Collective Activity ◽  
Technical Culture ◽  
Knowledge And Practice ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

AbstractThis essay introduces a special issue of the BJHS on communities of natural knowledge and artificial practice in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London. In seeking to understand the rise of a learned and technical culture within a growing and changing city, our approach has been inclusive in terms of the activities, people and places we consider worth exploring but shaped by a sense of the importance of collective activity, training, storage of information and identity. London's knowledge culture was formed by the public, pragmatic and commercial spaces of the city rather than by the academy or the court. In this introduction, we outline the types of group and institution within our view and acknowledge the many locations that might be explored further. Above all, we introduce a particular vision of London's potential as a city of knowledge and practice, arising from its commercial and mercantile activity and fostered within its range of corporations, institutions and associations. This was recognized and promoted by contemporary authors, including natural and experimental philosophers, practical mathematicians, artisans and others, who sought to establish a place for and recognition of their individual and collective skills and knowledge within the metropolis.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, F. R. S

1984 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-49 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
General Nature ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Prime Concern ◽  
The World ◽  
Special Concern ◽  
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Professor of Physics, Mathematics, Astronomy and Natural Philosophy at Göttingen University, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1793. At his death, on 24 February 1799, he left numerous writings of scientific and general nature, as well as many letters and, most important of all, copious personal notes. It is for these that he is mainly remembered. They include reflections on practically all the topics which were of special concern in the Age of Enlightenment. Due to their diversity it is not easy to obtain a comprehensive overview of his ideas and opinions, especially as they are often contained or developed in articles on assorted matters. Many of his themes lost their topicality, though by no means their relevance to Lichtenberg’s prime concern, to understand the world and in particular the human mind, in order to achieve realistic improvements. He jotted down his notes from 1764 until he died, in what he called his ‘waste books’, a term he borrowed from English tradesmen (1). Many of his notes are pointed, witty and unusually candid. Thus they allow remarkable insights into the trends of the last decades of the eighteenth century. They also demonstrate the importance of the Royal Society in establishing Göttingen as the leading scientific university in Germany and spreading English philosophical, literary and cultural influence.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Quest for Natural Species

1996 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-553
Author(s):  
Alexandre Métraux
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) was a prolific writer, a multifaceted naturalist, and a zoologist by second profession. Throughout his adult life he lived up to his passion of politely contributing to the advancement of natural philosophy by publishing more than 30,000 pages, probably too much for even the most scrupulous (and persevering) historians of science who seek to reconstruct his theories and to shed some light on the role he played in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century biology.

Essay reviews: The spring-tide of experimental philosophy

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-316
Keyword(s):  
Steady State ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Spring Tide ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Public ◽  
Experimental Learning ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Public Demonstration

Marie Boas Hall, Promoting experimental learning: experiment and the Royal Society, 1660-1727 . Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. xiii + 207, £35.00 ISBN 0-521-40503-3 In her welcome new book, Marie Hall traces the development and the subsequent decline of the public demonstration of experiments at the weekly meetings of the Royal Society, from the foundation in late 1660 to the end of Newton’s Presidency, at his death in 1727. The history is divided into three periods: the early optimistic Baconian phase, from 1660 to the mid-1670s; the more sombre middle period of the last quarter of the 17th century, when the attempted recapture of the early ideals met with only modest success; and the years spanned by Newton’s Presidency (1703- 27), when ‘Experiments of Fruit’ were largely abandoned in favour of ‘Experiments of Light’, and attention turned from useful inventions to the natural philosophy of a time-bounded universe in the steady-state, with its theosophic and theotechnic implications.

Dryden and the scientific image

1963 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-35
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
Copernican System ◽  
Active Interest ◽  
Scientific Ideas

For one brief period, at all events, no one could speak of two cultures in England, and that period was the Restoration. The decades that surround the founding of the Royal Society in 1660 are full of the intellectual excitement that might ideally arise from the free interchange of ideas among scientists, poets, and philosophers. In no other age has it been so: no Elizabethan poet can be shown to have taken an active interest in scientific discovery, unless we call geography a science—though it is conceivable that Ben Jonson, lecturing in rhetoric at Gresham College in London in the very centre of the ferment that eventually produced the Royal Society, had access to new scientific ideas. Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (1605) was merely a manifesto for the public encouragement of knowledge, and for years after his death it remained unfulfilled. Milton wrote Paradise Lost indifferent, apparently, to the question whether the Ptolemaic or Copernican system were true, and probably preferred the discredited Ptolemaic system for no better reason than that, in its picturesque detail, it suited his epic purposes better. And the record of English poets and philosophers after the appearance of Newton’s Principia in 1687 is hardly better. His Opticks of 1704, it is true, had a perceptible influence on eighteenth-century poets which has already been studied; but what is much more remarkable is the general avoidance of scientific discovery by the literary world of Augustan London.

Concepts of power: natural philosophy and the uses of machines in mid-eighteenth-century London

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Q. Morton
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
Understanding Of Science

How may scientific research contribute effectively to industrial development? This question has been debated for many years. However, a recent development in this discussion has come from a number of eminent scientists and others who have become concerned with what has become known as the public understanding of science. According to them, a greater understanding of science by members of the public would result in a higher value being placed on scientific research, which, eventually, would result in both increased social status for scientists and growing funding from government and industry for their work. Thus, in part, concern about the public understanding of science is an indirect way of influencing the outcome of discussions about the science budget.

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