Topham, J.R. (2000) Scientific publishing and the reading of science in nineteenth-century Britain: a historiographical survey and guide to sources. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 31 (4). pp. 559-612. ISSN 0039-3681
Abstract
[FIRST PARAGRAPH]
It is now generally accepted that both the conception and practices of natural enquiry in the Western tradition underwent a series of profound developments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century—developments which have been variously characterized as a ‘second scientific revolution’ and, much more tellingly, as the ‘invention of science’. As several authors have argued, moreover, a crucial aspect of this change consisted in the distinctive audience relations of the new sciences. While eighteenth-century natural philosophy was distinguished by an audience relation in which, as William Whewell put it, ‘a large and popular circle of spectators and amateurs [felt] themselves nearly upon a level, in the value of their trials and speculations, with more profound thinkers’, the science which was invented in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was, as Simon Schaffer has argued, marked by the ‘emergence of disciplined, trained cadres of research scientists’ clearly distinguished from a wider, exoteric public. Similarly, Jan Golinski argues that the ‘emergence of new instrumentation and a more consolidated social structure for the specialist community’ for early nineteenth-century chemistry was intimately connected with the transformation in the role of its public audience to a condition of relative passivity. These moves were underpinned by crucial epistemological and rhetorical shifts—from a logic of discovery, theoretically open to all, to a more restrictive notion of discovery as the preserve of scientific ‘genius’, and from an open-ended philosophy of ‘experience’ to a far more restrictive notion of disciplined ‘expertise’. Both of these moves were intended to do boundary work, restricting the community active in creating and validating scientific knowledge, and producing a passive public.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) > Division of the History and Philosophy of Science (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Leeds Philosophy Department |
Date Deposited: | 10 Oct 2007 12:06 |
Last Modified: | 16 Sep 2016 13:32 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0039-3681(00)00030-3 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/S0039-3681(00)00030-3 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:3320 |