Scientific Americans: The Making of Popular Science and Evolution in Early-Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture by John Bruni

AbstractBetween 1916 and 1927, botanists in several countries independently resolved three problems that had mystified earlier naturalists – including Charles Darwin: how did the many species of orchid that did not produce nectar persuade insects to pollinate them? Why did some orchid flowers seem to mimic insects? And why should a native British orchid suffer ‘attacks’ from a bee? Half a century after Darwin's death, these three mysteries were shown to be aspects of a phenomenon now known as pseudocopulation, whereby male insects are deceived into attempting to mate with the orchid's flowers, which mimic female insects; the males then carry the flower's pollen with them when they move on to try the next deceptive orchid. Early twentieth-century botanists were able to see what their predecessors had not because orchids (along with other plants) had undergone an imaginative re-creation: Darwin's science was appropriated by popular interpreters of science, including the novelist Grant Allen; then H.G. Wells imagined orchids as killers (inspiring a number of imitators), to produce a genre of orchid stories that reflected significant cultural shifts, not least in the presentation of female sexuality. It was only after these changes that scientists were able to see plants as equipped with agency, actively able to pursue their own, cunning reproductive strategies – and to outwit animals in the process. This paper traces the movement of a set of ideas that were created in a context that was recognizably scientific; they then became popular non-fiction, then popular fiction, and then inspired a new science, which in turn inspired a new generation of fiction writers. Long after clear barriers between elite and popular science had supposedly been established in the early twentieth century, they remained porous because a variety of imaginative writers kept destabilizing them. The fluidity of the boundaries between makers, interpreters and publics of scientific knowledge was a highly productive one; it helped biology become a vital part of public culture in the twentieth century and beyond.

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Ukrainian Popular Science in Habsburg Galicia, 1900-14

East/West Journal of Ukrainian Studies ◽

10.21226/ewjus615 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 139-171

Author(s):

Martin Rohde

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Public Awareness ◽

Scientific Research ◽

Scientific Work ◽

Popular Science ◽

Academic Discourse ◽

Scientific Society ◽

Popularization Of Science ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

National Science

This paper historicizes the idea of “popular science” in the Ukrainian academic discourse in relation to contemporary approaches to “national science” (as “science proper”) and places special emphasis on the introduction of regular scientific lectures to public audiences in early twentieth century Habsburg Galicia. The Shevchenko Scientific Society was the central Ukrainian association of scholars and scientists at the time. Male-dominated, and increasingly dedicated to “Ukrainoznavstvo” (“Ukrainian studies”), the Shevchenko Scientific Society paid little attention to the popularization of scientific research. The Petro Mohyla Society for Ukrainian Scientific Lectures emerged in reaction to the Shevchenko Society. Its goal was to expand public awareness of the scientific work, and its members proceeded to organize regular public lectures all over Galicia between 1909 and 1914. This paper analyzes such popularization of science, propagated by the Petro Mohyla Society, and examines the lecture audiences with regard to their location, gender, and respective interests.

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A teacher, a scientist, a wife: the complex self of Joséphine Schouteden-Wéry (1879-1954)

Persona Studies ◽

10.21153/ps2018vol4no1art703 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 74-87

Author(s):

Sarah Erman

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Popular Science ◽

Public Image ◽

Biological Research ◽

Research And Teaching ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Science Writer ◽

Professional Teacher ◽

Cultural Repertoires

In early twentieth-century Belgium, a number of women started careers in teaching and furthered their education at university. This article explores how one of them, Joséphine Schouteden-Wéry – a teacher, a botanist and wife of a successful zoologist – built her public image as a professional “teacher-scientist” by tapping into various pre-existing cultural repertoires for the female popular science writer and for the scientist. I examine how several elements were instrumental in this process, for both the making and the circulation of her public self. Attention is thus directed towards the opportunities provided by the ambiguity of the field as a place of biological research and teaching, the fluidity and uses of the persona of the explorer by scientists and non-scientists alike, and the different impacts of scientific sociability. It is argued that while Schouteden-Wéry strove to construct an independent and consistent public self as a scientist, a teacher and a wife, the different sides of her multifaceted public self occasionally clashed with each other.

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Teaching nature study on the blackboard in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/anh.2012.0062 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 39 (1) ◽

pp. 59-76 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Caitlin Donahue Wylie

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Popular Science ◽

Natural World ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

Nature Study ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Object Lessons ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

Young Students

England's Education Acts in the late nineteenth century made school free and mandatory for all children, filling schools with more and younger students. Visual teaching methods such as blackboard drawing were used to catch young students’ eyes and engage their interest. At the same time, there was high public engagement with natural history and popular science lectures, which built the perception of science as accessible, interesting and useful for people of all social classes. This “science for all” trend along with the new universal education paved the way for nature study, a new school subject based on experiential learning through observation of plants and animals, similar to the popular nineteenth-century pedagogy of object lessons. The many manuals about nature study that were published for teachers in England in the early twentieth century reveal the content, pedagogy, and portrayal of science communicated to young students. Analysis of one manual, Nature teaching on the blackboard (1910), sheds light on typical nature study lessons, including suggested images for teachers to draw on the blackboard. Visual methods of teaching science were not limited to schoolchildren: university lecturers as well as popularizers of science used object lessons and blackboard drawing to educate and entertain their adult audiences. Comparing blackboard teaching of nature study with other educational images and audiences for science explores how multisensory learning and the blackboard brought information about the natural world and engagement with science to the public.

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Bells and the Problem of Realism in Ravel’s Early Piano Music

Journal of Musicology ◽

10.1525/jm.2017.34.3.432 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

pp. 432-472 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Alexandra Kieffer

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Piano Music ◽

Popular Science ◽

Musical Composition ◽

Maurice Ravel ◽

Catholic Clergy ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Nineteenth Century France ◽

Musical Listening

Early in his career Maurice Ravel composed two pieces that take bells as their subject: “Entre Cloches” from Sites auriculaires, composed in 1897, and “La vallée des cloches,” the final movement of the 1905 work Miroirs. Although these pieces can be contextualized within a nineteenth-century lineage of French piano pieces that depict bell peals, they also set themselves apart by virtue of their heightened attention to the particularities of bell sonorities. Relying heavily on repetitive ostinato patterns, quartal harmonies, and intense dissonances, these pieces play in the nebulous space between transcription and composition. Ravel’s experimentation with bell sonorities in his piano music can be understood in relation to a broader discourse surrounding the sound of bells in nineteenth-century France. A complex sonic object, bell resonance lent itself to different modes of listening: the harmoniousness of bell peals was a common refrain among romantic poets, Catholic clergy, and campanarian historians, but toward the end of the century it became increasingly common for physicists and popular-science publications to complain that bells were inherently discordant. In this context Ravel’s depictions of bells in “Entre cloches” and “La vallée des cloches” suggest a shift in the place of musical listening in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cultures of aurality. Ravel’s musical listening entailed heightened attentiveness to the empirical qualities of non-musical sound; his pieces negotiate in new ways the boundary between musical composition and the protean sonic world outside of music. This reorientation of musical listening participates in a broader questioning by early twentieth-century modernists of the nature of music and its sonic material.

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Taking science to the countryside: fictionalizing the country through novels for young people in early twentieth-century Portugal

BJHS Themes ◽

10.1017/bjt.2018.3 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

pp. 73-103

Author(s):

ISABEL ZILHÃO

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Young People ◽

Agricultural Policy ◽

Fish Farming ◽

Popular Science ◽

Daily Press ◽

Science Technology ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Science Popularization ◽

Poultry Farming

AbstractThis article addresses and discusses one of the first literary attempts to extend the communication of science to young people – agriculture being the case in point – through moralizing and educational novels in early twentieth-century Portugal. In this study, I show that a set of popular books on agriculture addressing horticulture, poultry farming, beekeeping, dairy farming, silkworm breeding, orchard culture and fish farming written for young people by the agricultural engineer João Coelho da Motta Prego – coupled with popularizing articles about agricultural policy and agronomy written by him in the daily press – clearly served the purpose of re-educating the Portuguese rural inhabitant and reviving the country's agriculture-based economy. The article showcases how locality drives the way science and technology are addressed, what is communicated, who writes for whom, and the purpose of the writing itself. It highlights how science popularization/popular science, in its various formats (i.e. science, technology and medicine), can be more than a way to teach science to a lay audience.

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Presidential address Experts and publishers: writing popular science in early twentieth-century Britain, writing popular history of science now

The British Journal for the History of Science ◽

10.1017/s000708740600793x ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 39 (2) ◽

pp. 159-187 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

PETER J. Bowler

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

History Of Science ◽

Scientific Community ◽

Presidential Address ◽

Popular Science ◽

Science Writing ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

History Of ◽

Popular Science Writing ◽

Popular Writing

The bulk of this address concerns itself with the extent to which professional scientists were involved in popular science writing in early twentieth-century Britain. Contrary to a widespread assumption, it is argued that a significant proportion of the scientific community engaged in writing the more educational type of popular science. Some high-profile figures acquired enough skill in popular writing to exert considerable influence over the public's perception of science and its significance. The address also shows how publishers actively sought ‘expert’ authors for popular material, but at the same time controlled what was published in accordance with their perception of what would sell. At a more popular level of writing there were many semi-professional authors who, while not active scientists, exploited close contacts with the scientific community. Here there was a strong emphasis on the practical applications of science.The address concludes by suggesting parallels between popular science writing in this period and the present state of popular writing about the history of science.

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