Review of Popularizing Science and Technology in the European Periphery, 1800–2000, by Papanelopoulou, Nieto-Galan and Perdiguero (eds.). Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009

TitleReview of Popularizing Science and Technology in the European Periphery, 1800–2000, by Papanelopoulou, Nieto-Galan and Perdiguero (eds.). Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2010
AuthorsBrock WH
JournalSocial History of Medicine
Volume23
Issue2
Pagination419-449
Type of ArticleReview
Full Text

Studies of the diffusion and popularization of science have become a distinctive area of historical scholarship during the past decade, albeit confined to British, American, French and German scenarios. For some time now historians of science have realised that the diffusion model of popularization, in which the ideas and observations of professional scientists and technologists are repackaged as simplified stories to the untutored masses, is both over-simplified and untrue. Clearly the diffusion model breaks down for countries that had no scientific elite or scientific institutional infrastructure. Countries on the European periphery that were emerging from the shackles of state censorship at the beginning of the nineteenth century were dependent upon the translation of foreign textbooks and the reportage of scientific, medical and technological developments by natives who were able to read and digest English, French and German scientific periodicals and books.
Popularizing Science, tightly edited by a Greek historian with two Spanish scholars, is the result of a conference held in Majorca in 2006, which examined the introduction of ‘modern’ science, technology and medicine into European countries that lay outside the principal centres of scientific culture such as Edinburgh, London, Paris and Berlin.
Arranged chronologically, the contributors provide absorbing case histories drawn from Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Hungary, Sweden and inter-war Catalonia from the late eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. The authors’ prose has been vetted by an English expert and is flawless and very readable. The book is held together by an excellent preliminary historiographical essay by John Topham which reflects upon the diverse meanings of ‘popular science’ and the cultural significance of popularization for the history of science. The other authors have carefully revised their studies in the light of Topham’s contribution and its strong argument that popularization has served many purposes ranging from creating boundaries for professionals, to the promotion of knowledge and interdisciplinarity amongst specialising experts, the encouragement of amateurs to participate in science, the selling of books and journals, and the promoting of political and rationalist agendas. Topham thus provides the book with its binding thread and shows how historians of science in ‘periphera’ countries that lack ‘great’ figures can contribute to the history of science and medicine by making the primary and secondary communication of science and medicine their focus of research.
Only two of the eleven essays are directly concerned with the popularization of medicine. The first, a collaborative contribution from Enrique Perdiguero, José Pardo-Tomás and Àlvar Marinez-Vidal concerns a Catalan periodical Monografies Mèdiques (1926–37) that served its editor as a vehicle for promoting a distinctive Catalonian, as opposed to Spanish, culture while also providing up-to-date medical and surgical knowledge for provincial practitioners. The other, by Matiana González-Silva, examines how

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research on human genetics was reported in the weekly science supplements of the left-wing Spanish newspaper El Pais between its foundation in 1976 and 2006. She demonstrates that, because Spain was largely inactive in genome research, journalists’ reports were less critical or technical and more concerned to stress ethical and social issues. By contrast, reports on subjects where Spaniards had expertise, such as on the aetiology of disease, were both technical and critical.
The significance of national aspirations and political and religious agendas are revealed in several essays. Paola Govani demonstrates how popularization was a significant part of a political agenda to unite Italians and to ensure Italy’s scientific equality with other European nations. A nationalist focus is also evident in the contribution of Gert Vanpaemel and Brigitte Van Tiggelin on the science promoted in the Bibliothèque Nationale and Encyclopédie Populaire in the 1840s by the Brussels patriot and publisher Alexandre Jamar. Similarly in Denmark, as shown by Rikke Schmidt Kjaergaard, Danes were largely informed about scientific and technical developments through exhibitions and museum displays that engendered local, national and regional pride. Another group of essays is concerned with the role of popularization in furthering rationalism in Catholic countries. Stefan Pohl-Valero analyses the slightly dotty work of the Spanish engineer Enrique Serrano Fatigati in promoting ‘energetics’ as a moral, non-materialistic, form of thermodynamics in Spain; Gábor Pallo writes about a group of Hungarian politicians and businessmen who utilised German scientific developments to introduce general education among Hungarians through the use of scientific theatre and reading groups; and Johan Kärnfelt investigates how in early twentieth-century Sweden, the few professional astronomers turned to popularization through adult education classes as a way of making extra money.
There are many other delightful features of this splendid collection. I liked Fontes Da Costa’s beautifully told story of the Portuguese poetess, the Marquis of Alornas. Her Erasmus Darwin-like popularization of the Linnaean system, the Recreaçôes Botánicas, which was circulated among the Portuguese aristocracy, provides a good example of the way women were able to contribute to science as writers. Another first-class essay by Josep Simon is concerned with the English translations of the Traité élémentaire de physique expeérimentales (1851) and Cours de physique expérimentales (1859) by the private school teacher Adolphe Ganot. Through the law of unintended consequences, these texts, which were originally intended for medical students, became vehicles for the circulation of knowledge of physics in Great Britain as secondary education began to blossom. Simon elegantly demonstrates the roles of booksellers, publishers, translators, readers, reviewers and instrument makers in creating a market for such popular texts.
By uncovering the various strategies of scientific popularization pursued in countries whose social and political histories will be mostly unfamiliar to the majority of British, American, French and German historians of science, Popularizing Science makes an important contribution to our understanding of scientific communication in any country. The editors draw various threads together in a summary conclusion to which is appended a valuable bibliography of secondary works on popularization in various languages.

William H. Brock
University of Leicester