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Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,625
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Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment (Paperback)
Series: Science, Technology and Culture, 1700-1945
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Air-pumps, electrical machines, colliding ivory balls, coloured
sparks, mechanical planetariums, magic mirrors, hot-air balloons -
these are just a sample of the devices displayed in public
demonstrations of science in the eighteenth century. Public and
private demonstrations of natural philosophy in Europe then
differed vastly from today's unadorned and anonymous laboratory
experiments. Science was cultivated for a variety of purposes in
many different places; scientific instruments were built and used
for investigative and didactic experiments as well as for
entertainment and popular shows. Between the culture of curiosities
which characterized the seventeenth century and the distinction
between academic and popular science that gradually emerged in the
nineteenth, the eighteenth century was a period when scientific
activities took place in a variety of sites, ranging from
academies, and learned societies to salons and popular fairs, shops
and streets. This collection of case studies describing public
demonstrations in Britain, Germany, Italy and France exemplifies
the wide variety of settings for scientific activities in the
European Enlightenment. Filled with sparks and smells, the essays
raise broader issues about the ways in which modern science
established its legitimacy and social acceptability. They point to
two major features of the cultures of science in the
eighteenth-century: entertainment and utility. Experimental
demonstrations were attended by apothecaries and craftsmen for
vocational purposes. At the same time, they had to fit in with the
taste of both polite society and market culture. Public
demonstrations were a favourite entertainment for ladies and
gentlemen and a profitable activity for instrument makers and
booksellers.
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