IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001320569

Popular Science and Politics in Interwar France (2013)

Science in Context
Volume: 26
Pages: 459--471

Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Part of the special supplement “Communicating Science: National Approaches in Twentieth-Century Europe”.
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Science and culture Methods of communication; media Encyclopedias and dictionaries Exhibitions and fairs Government sponsored science Popular culture Science and politics Periodicals; serials Radio Museums 20th century, early France

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.

...More

Included in

Article Schirrmacher, Arne (2013) Introduction: Communicating Science: National Approaches in Twentieth-Century Europe. Science in Context (p. 393). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001320569/

Citations Indexes

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 McCarthy, Conal; (2014)
“Empirical Anthropologists Advocating Cultural Adjustments”: The Anthropological Governance of pirana Ngata and the Native Affairs Department (/isis/citation/CBB001201589/)

Article Grigson, Caroline; (2015)
New Information on Indian Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceros unicornis) in Britain in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB001500439/)

Article Mouré, Kenneth; (2015)
La Capitale de la Faim: Black Market Restaurants in Paris, 1940-1944 (/isis/citation/CBB001500569/)

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/)

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/)

Book Cheng, John; (2012)
Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America (/isis/citation/CBB001202122/)

Article Bowler, Peter J.; (2013)
Popular Science Magazines in Interwar Britain: Authors and Readerships (/isis/citation/CBB001320568/)

Article Serna, Pierre; (2014)
The Republican Menagerie: Animal Politics in the French Revolution (/isis/citation/CBB001201412/)

Article Hussey, Kristin D.; (2014)
Ming the Forgotten Celebrity: A Giant Panda Skull at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (/isis/citation/CBB001321132/)

Article Luckhurst, Roger; (2012)
Science versus Rumour: Artefaction and Counter-Narrative in the Egyptian Rooms of the British Museum (/isis/citation/CBB001212977/)

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 Schirrmacher, Arne; (2013)
Popular Science as Cultural Dispositif: On the German Way of Science Communication in the Twentieth Century (/isis/citation/CBB001320570/)

Book Gordon, Rae Beth; (2009)
Dances with Darwin, 1875--1910: Vernacular Modernity in France (/isis/citation/CBB000951085/)

Chapter Wintle, Claire; (2012)
Visiting the Empire at the Provincial Museum, 1900--50 (/isis/citation/CBB001201467/)

Chapter Nair, Savithri Preetha; (2012)
Edgar Thurston at the Madras Museum (1885--1909): The Multiple Careers of a Colonial Museum Curator (/isis/citation/CBB001201473/)

Article Bennett, Tony; Dibley, Ben; Harrison, Rodney; (2014)
Introduction: Anthropology, Collecting and Colonial Governmentalities (/isis/citation/CBB001201581/)

Article Casado, Santos; Aragón, Santiago; (2014)
Vignettes of Spanish Nature: Imagining a National Fauna at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid (1910--1936) (/isis/citation/CBB001201043/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}