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This collection explores the richness of Scottish intellectual
life, its currents and controversies, from the French Revolution to
the First World War, focusing in particular on the legacy of the
Scottish Enlightenment. Offering a series of cutting-edge
interventions, the contributors cast light on a range of
individuals, themes and episodes from the period. Topics range from
the role of women as intellectuals to the rise of a science of
race, and from freethinking secularism to the debate over George
Davie's influential account of 19th-century universities.
Collectively, the chapters represent a pioneering overview of
Scottish intellectual life during the long 19th century.
Threatened by the proliferation of cheap, mass-produced
publications, the Religious Tract Society issued a series of
publications on popular science during the 1840s. The books were
intended to counter the developing notion that science and faith
were mutually exclusive, and the Society's authors employed a full
repertoire of evangelical techniques--low prices, simple language,
carefully structured narratives--to convert their readers. The
application of such techniques to popular science resulted in one
of the most widely available sources of information on the sciences
in the Victorian era.
A fascinating study of the tenuous relationship between science and
religion in evangelical publishing, "Science and Salvation"
examines questions of practice and faith from a fresh perspective.
Rather than highlighting works by expert men of science, Aileen
Fyfe instead considers a group of relatively undistinguished
authors who used thinly veiled Christian rhetoric to educate first,
but to convert as well. This important volume is destined to become
essential reading for historians of science, religion, and
publishing alike.
The nineteenth century was an age of transformation in science,
when scientists were rewarded for their startling new discoveries
with increased social status and authority. But it was also a time
when ordinary people from across the social spectrum were given the
opportunity to participate in science, for education,
entertainment, or both. In Victorian Britain science could be
encountered in myriad forms and in countless locations: in
panoramic shows, exhibitions, and galleries; in city museums and
country houses; in popular lectures; and even in domestic
conversations that revolved around the latest books and
periodicals.
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Science in the Marketplace" reveals this other side of Victorian
scientific life by placing the sciences in the wider cultural
marketplace, ultimately showing that the creation of new sites and
audiences was just as crucial to the growing public interest in
science as were the scientists themselves. By focusing attention on
the scientific audience, as opposed to the scientific community or
self-styled popularizers, "Science in the Marketplace" ably links
larger societal changes--in literacy, in industrial technologies,
and in leisure--to the evolution of "popular science."
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