Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette (Author)
Science in Context
Volume: 26
Pages: 459--471
Edition Details: Part of the special supplement “Communicating Science: National Approaches in Twentieth-Century Europe”.
Language: English
The interwar period in France is characterized by intense activity to disseminate science in society through various media: magazines, conferences, book series, encyclopedias, radio, exhibitions, and museums. In this context, the scientific community developed significant attempts to disseminate science in close alliance with the State. This paper presents three ambitious projects conducted in the 1930s which targeted different audiences and engaged the social sciences along with the natural sciences. The first project was a multimedia enterprise aimed at bridging what would later be named "the two cultures" - natural sciences and humanities - rather than at popularizing scientific results in the society at large. The second project, an encyclopedia named Encyclopédie française edited by the French historian Lucien Febvre, was meant to shape a cultural view of science for the general public. The third project and the most successful enterprise was the Palais de la découverte designed by the physicist Jean Perrin and explicitly aimed at attracting the young public. This paper explores the paradoxes that resulted from these large enterprises. Despite their social ideals, the scientists-popularizers favored an elitist concept of popular science essentially aimed at integrating science into high culture. While they strove to overcome the increased specialization of sciences, their efforts nevertheless accelerated the professionalization of scientific research and the isolation of science in an ivory tower. In their attempts to get closer to the public, they eventually contributed to spreading the cliché of the increasing gap between the scientists and the public.
...MoreArticle Schirrmacher, Arne (2013) Introduction: Communicating Science: National Approaches in Twentieth-Century Europe. Science in Context (p. 393).
Similar Citations
Article
Andrews, James T.;
(2013)
An Evolving Scientific Public Sphere: State Science Enlightenment, Communicative Discourse, and Public Culture from Imperial Russia to Khrushchev's Soviet Times
(/isis/citation/CBB001320571/)
Article
Grigson, Caroline;
(2015)
New Information on Indian Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceros unicornis) in Britain in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001500439/)
Article
McCarthy, Conal;
(2014)
“Empirical Anthropologists Advocating Cultural Adjustments”: The Anthropological Governance of pirana Ngata and the Native Affairs Department
(/isis/citation/CBB001201589/)
Book
Ross, Corey;
(2008)
Media and the Making of Modern Germany: Mass Communications, Society, and Politics from the Empire to the Third Reich
(/isis/citation/CBB001232126/)
Article
Nieto-Galan, Agustí;
(2012)
Scientific “Marvels” in the Public Sphere: Barcelona and Its 1888 International Exhibition
(/isis/citation/CBB001320185/)
Article
Mouré, Kenneth;
(2015)
La Capitale de la Faim: Black Market Restaurants in Paris, 1940-1944
(/isis/citation/CBB001500569/)
Chapter
Basu, Paul;
(2012)
A Museum for Sierra Leone? Amateur Enthusiasms and Colonial Museum Policy in British West Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB001201472/)
Article
Taylor, Jennie;
(2012)
Pennies from Heaven and Earth in Mass Observation's Blackpool
(/isis/citation/CBB001214681/)
Article
Bowler, Peter J.;
(2013)
Popular Science Magazines in Interwar Britain: Authors and Readerships
(/isis/citation/CBB001320568/)
Book
Cheng, John;
(2012)
Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America
(/isis/citation/CBB001202122/)
Article
Serna, Pierre;
(2014)
The Republican Menagerie: Animal Politics in the French Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001201412/)
Article
Luckhurst, Roger;
(2012)
Science versus Rumour: Artefaction and Counter-Narrative in the Egyptian Rooms of the British Museum
(/isis/citation/CBB001212977/)
Article
Hussey, Kristin D.;
(2014)
Ming the Forgotten Celebrity: A Giant Panda Skull at the Royal College of Surgeons of England
(/isis/citation/CBB001321132/)
Book
Alexander Hall;
(2021)
Evolution on British Television and Radio: Transmissions and Transmutations
(/isis/citation/CBB060338470/)
Article
Schirrmacher, Arne;
(2013)
Popular Science as Cultural Dispositif: On the German Way of Science Communication in the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001320570/)
Article
Schwartz, Matthias;
(2013)
How Nauchnaia Fantastika Was Made: The Debates about the Genre of Science Fiction from NEP to High Stalinism
(/isis/citation/CBB001201410/)
Article
Thomas, Sophie;
(2012)
Displaying Egypt: Archaeology, Spectacle, and the Museum in the Early Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001213314/)
Book
Lightman, Bernard V.;
Zon, Bennett;
(2014)
Evolution and Victorian Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001551310/)
Article
Arceneaux, Noah;
(2010)
Wanamaker's Department Store and the Origins of Electronic Media, 1910--1922
(/isis/citation/CBB001230630/)
Book
Arthur Asseraf;
(2019)
Electric News in Colonial Algeria
(/isis/citation/CBB134023687/)
Be the first to comment!