| Full Text | A group of scholars from the Mediterranean and Scandinavian fringes of Europe have been holding meetings and conferences on the theme of ‘Science and Technology in the European Periphery’ for the last 10 years. The most recent meeting, in June 2010, demonstrated the continuing and widening appeal of the theme of peripherality (despite its obvious, and much-rehearsed, problems), with participants from Mexico, Brazil, Israel and Russia joining the group. The volume under review emerged from a 2006 meeting devoted to popularisation, a topic which—along with education and textbooks—seems likely to be of particular relevance to the historiography of science in ‘peripheral’ countries. Such countries as Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden and Hungary cannot claim the same contributions to modern science as can France, Germany, Britain and the USA and their historians have often been tempted to produce hagiographic accounts of overlooked heroes in an effort to establish a national scientific heritage. But studying the popularisation and communication of science should be a richer and
more rewarding vein of study. It contributes to the wider historiographical debates about the circulation of knowledge at an international and regional level; and it should also help us to address the social and cultural role of the sciences in nations with relatively small or disadvantaged scientific communities.
The volume opens with two historiographical chapters, by Jonathan Topham and Paola Govoni, which survey the current state of scholarship on ‘popular science’ and discuss how the lessons of the rich literature on British popular science might be applied—or not—to other nations, such as Italy. The nine case studies which follow are almost all post-1850 and, despite the book’s title, have very little to do with technology. One might also note that natural history is surprisingly absent: there is one chapter on Portuguese botanical poems, but then we have chapters on French physics textbooks, Spanish thermodynamics, Swedish astronomy, and Spanish medicine and genetics. A further three chapters focus on particular media rather than disciplines: cheap Belgian instructive books, exhibitions and museums in Denmark, and theatrical lecture-demonstrations-with-music in Hungary.
One of Topham’s key points concerns the terminology of popular science and the importance of using actors’ categories. Govoni’s discussion of the Italian terms makes clear why these things matter. Whereas in English, the terms ‘popular science’ and ‘science popularisation’ have been used continuously for the last two centuries (albeit with different shades of meaning, which historians need to be careful about), in Italy, the terms ‘scienza popolare’ and ‘divulgazione scientifica’ have quite distinct histories of usage. The latter is the term used now for a wide range of popularisation activities, and has a history going back two centuries or so; whereas the former was used specifically in the late nineteenth century to characterise efforts to promote scientific education and popularisation as part of the new Italian national identity. These linguistic features are always at risk of being lost in translation, but point to important national differences.
Govoni remarks (p. 25) that studies of Italian popular science are still at an early stage, and I think it is fair to say that this is true of all of the ‘peripheral’ countries. Coming to this volume from the British historiography, what one notices is a focus on popularisers (both scientists and mediators) rather than on audiences; and a focus on self-conscious popularisation activities rather than those forms of scientific engagement that have variously been called ‘science in popular culture’ or ‘ethnoscience’. This, of course, is what the British historiography looked like not that long ago.
Noting that the historiography of popular science in the peripheral countries is at an early stage does not mean that historians of popular science in Portugal or Hungary are less advanced than their counterparts elsewhere; but they simply do not have the advantage of 30 years of relevant scholarship to draw upon. They are the pioneers, seeking to establish standard points of reference which later scholars will need when filling in the details of the map. Although there is no necessity that the historiography of popular science in other countries should follow the model of development of British historiography, the practical logistics of research make it likely that they will do so. Quite simply, it makes sense to start a study of popular science in a particular country with those historical actors who are easiest to identify and who are most likely to have left traces in the historical record. And we all know that it is usually far more straightforward to recover and analyse the materials of popularisation than the reactions to them. It could also be argued that it would be difficult to make sense of either audience experiences or science in popular culture without first having a good overview of the scientific community’s engagement (direct or mediated) in popular science.
There are many challenges facing the attempt to write the trans-national, comparative history of science popularisation in Europe to which STEP members aspire. A convincing comparative history of this type depends on the prior completion of a variety of other histories, so that appropriate comparisons can be made. We need to be sure we understand the social and political status of science and scientists in each country, so we know whether we are dealing with a professional community with substantial state recognition, or a community aspiring to that status, or a community in which (as in Italy) sufficient members were politically active in their own right that professional recognition seemed less important.
But more than that, the successful study of popularisation of science depends on a firm grasp of the histories of education, of literacy and of print culture (and other media). The emergence of an audience for popular scientific texts, lectures and displays depends upon the spread of literacy and education. One cannot understand why the intended audience of ‘popular’ science in late nineteenth-century Italy was rather more affluent than one might expect, without knowing about the high levels of illiteracy in most regions of Italy. Equally, we should be aware that the circulation of knowledge could be controlled by national legislation, particularly through copyright laws (especially, the recognition, or not, of international copyright), and I was astonished to learn that censorship was still in operation in Portugal until 1821. Without understanding how these print practices operated in each country, we cannot understand why certain forms of popular science were more possible (or more successful) in certain countries than in others. This volume is confessedly but a first stage towards a pan-European history of science popularisation. In their ‘Concluding Remarks’, the editors try to draw conclusions from their case studies, but in reality, more questions are raised than are currently answered. They seek to identify anything distinctive about the popularisation of the sciences on the periphery, and in particular, any shared characteristics that distinguish peripheral popularisation from that in countries such as Britain.
Among their suggestions are the prominent role played by relatively minor scientific figures; the attractiveness of popularisation activities for financial reasons in the absence of a professionalised scientific community; and a high level of collaboration between scientists and interested amateurs in the popularisation of science. Yet none of these, it seems to me, are indeed distinctive to ‘peripheral’ countries. They might have seemed so 10 years ago, when the British historiography was dominated by the emergence of professional science and the role of several eminent X-clubbers in popularising science. But the most recent scholarship is showing that, in Britain too, money remained important long after professionalisation; many popularisers were far less intellectually eminent than Huxley or Tyndall; and publishers, editors and interested others were always important. These are features of popularisation, not of peripherality.
Something which does seem distinctively different from the British case is the way in which, as the editors put it, popularisation was used to ‘reinforce… the rhetoric against scientific backwardness and [promote] the need to modernise the nation through science and technology’ (p. 241). It may be an artefact of the focus on the late nineteenth century, but chapter after chapter reveals that—in Belgium, in Italy, in Catalonia—popularisation activities were tied to nation- building, with science being promoted as a key component of a new, modern, progressive national identity. It would be fascinating to analyse this link more completely, and to see the different forms it undoubtedly took in particular national circumstances.
In the main, however, when I look at this volume, I see more evidence of the importance of studying popularisation and popular science—not merely on the periphery, but everywhere. Such studies promise to be an incredibly fruitful way both of examining the circulation of knowledge and of analysing the social, cultural and political role of the sciences and their practitioners.
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