Rectenwald, Michael (Author)
This dissertation examines what I call the "publics of science, " from early to mid-nineteenth-century Britain. It is an account of new and emerging sites for the production, dissemination, and appropriation of knowledge amongst various participants--authors, publishers, editors, reviewers, critics, readers, and others--as they vied for (and against) cultural authority on the basis of beliefs claimed as "scientific. " Drawing on theoretical frameworks from the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), actor-network theory, periodical studies, the history of the book--and operating under the broad tent of cultural studies--I introduce to the cultural history of science the kind of revisionism that has been directed at the Habermasian "public sphere " in cultural history and critical theory. I argue that during the period that I consider--roughly 1820 to 1860--the landscape of science in culture should be revised to account for multiple, distinct, yet overlapping publics of science. In the first two chapters, I consider how a scientific culture spread vis--vis radical science, gentlemanly education reform, and the new "useful knowledge " industry that they helped to spawn. In the following two chapters, I apply the methods of book history to Charles Lyell's {italic}Principles of Geology {/italic} (1830--33). First, I examine the context of production--the gentlemanly knowledge project initiated by Charles Lyell and the aims of the Murray publishing house. Drawing on Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, I then examine the early periodical reception of volume one to see how reviewers from various publics helped to shape the meaning of the text for their readers. In chapter five, I trace the development of Secularism from 1840s artisan freethought, showing that Secularism advanced a methodological materialism and a morality based on materialist principles, well in advance of the new naturalism or scientific agnosticism. In the conclusion, I consider causes for the "disappearance " of such subaltern or alternative science publics as radical science, the Mechanics' Institutes, and Secularism, from the history and historiography of science, suggesting how cultural studies of discourse can aid in their recuperation and point to possibilities for contemporary interventions in science and technology.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65 (2005): 3816. UMI pub. no. 3149738.
Article
Sen, B. K.;
(2002)
Growth of Scientific Periodicals in India (1788--1900) [Indexes]
(/isis/citation/CBB000340768/)
Book
Secord, James A.;
(2000)
Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
(/isis/citation/CBB000111752/)
Article
Topham, Jonathan R.;
(2000)
Scientific publishing and the reading of science in nineteenth-century Britain: A historiographical survey and guide to sources
(/isis/citation/CBB000111671/)
Chapter
Luckhurst, Roger;
(2004)
W. T. Stead's Occult Economies
(/isis/citation/CBB000450157/)
Chapter
Richardson, Angelique;
(2004)
Eugenics and Freedom at the Fin de Siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB000450169/)
Chapter
Topham, Jonathan R.;
(2004)
Periodicals and the Making of Reading Audiences for Science in Early 19th-century Britain: the Youth's Magazine, 1828--37
(/isis/citation/CBB000450152/)
Chapter
Henson, Louise;
(2004)
“In the Natural Course of Physical Things”: Ghosts and Science in Charles Dickens' All the Year Round
(/isis/citation/CBB000450156/)
Chapter
Sheffield, Suzanne Le-May;
(2004)
The “Empty-Headed Beauty” and the “Sweet Girl Graduate”: Women's Science Education in Punch, 1860--90
(/isis/citation/CBB000450149/)
Chapter
Sivasundaram, Sujit;
(2004)
The Periodical as Barometer: Spiritual Measurement and the Evangelical Magazine
(/isis/citation/CBB000450151/)
Chapter
Reid, Julia;
(2004)
The Academy and Cosmopolis: Evolution and Culture in Robert Louis Stevenson's Periodical Encounters
(/isis/citation/CBB000450168/)
Chapter
Sumpter, Caroline;
(2004)
Making Socialists or Murdering to Dissect? Natural History and Child Socialization in the Labour Prophet and Labour Leader
(/isis/citation/CBB000450150/)
Chapter
Anderson, Katharine;
(2004)
Almanacs and the Profits of Natural Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB000450155/)
Chapter
Shteir, Ann B.;
(2004)
Green-Stocking or Blue? Science in Three Women's Magazines, 1800--50
(/isis/citation/CBB000450148/)
Article
Melinda Baldwin;
(2020)
The Business of Being an Editor: Norman Lockyer, Macmillan and Company, and the Editorship of Nature, 1869–1919
(/isis/citation/CBB258942783/)
Article
Cavell, Janice;
(2013)
Publishing Sir John Franklin's Fate: Cannibalism, Journalism, and the 1881 Edition of Leopold McClintock's The Voyage of the “Fox” in the Arctic Seas
(/isis/citation/CBB001201827/)
Book
Meadows, A. J.;
(2008)
Science and Controversy: A Biography of Sir Norman Lockyer, Founder Editor of Nature
(/isis/citation/CBB000951848/)
Article
Baldwin, Melinda;
(2014)
“Keeping in the Race”: Physics, Publication Speed and National Publishing Strategies in Nature, 1895--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001214223/)
Book
Cantor, Geoffrey;
Dawson, Gowan;
Gooday, Graeme;
Noakes, Richard;
Shuttleworth, Sally;
Topham, Johnathan R.;
(2004)
Science in the Nineteenth Century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature
(/isis/citation/CBB000750856/)
Chapter
Ritvo, Harriet;
(2004)
The View from the Hills: Environment and Technology in Victorian Periodicals
(/isis/citation/CBB000450160/)
Chapter
Tilley, Elizabeth;
(2004)
Science, Industry, and Nationalism in the Dublin Penny Journal
(/isis/citation/CBB000450158/)
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