List of publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland published in 2019

IN Catalogue 70, Messrs. E. F. Goldsmith and Co., of 45 Old Bond Street, London, W. I, are offering for sale the library of Prof. A. Wolf, formerly professor of the history and philosophy of science at University College, London, and some new acquisitions, amounting in all to 834 items. The catalogue includes works on anthropology, astronomy, biography, biology, botany, chemistry, mathematics, optics, philosophy, psychology and statistics. Among the outstanding volumes are the first edition of “Astronomici Veteres” (1499), Tycho Brahe's “Epistolæ Astronomicæ” (1595), Simon Stevin's “Œuvres Mathematiques” (1634), Scheele's “Chemical Essays” and Volta's “Collezione dell' Opere” (1816). Modern writers are represented by numerous works of Einstein (including his “Brief Outline of the Development of the Theory of Relativity” from the special issue of NATURE on Relativity published on February 17, 1921), Freud, Galton, Karl Pearson and J. J. Thomson.

A history of science

The climate crisis has raised questions about the proper scale of historical analysis in the Anthropocene. After explaining how this methodological crisis differs from an earlier stand-off between proponents of microhistory and total history, this paper suggests a role for intellectual history in moving us beyond the current debate. What is needed is a history of "scaling"; that is, we need to historicize the process of mediating between different frameworks of measurement, even those that might at first appear incommensurable. Historical examples are explored in which such a process of commensuration has allowed for a pluralism of perceptions of space and time.

Big is a Thing of the Past: Climate Change and Methodology in the History of Ideas.

The imprimatur bestowed by peer review has a history that is both shorter and more complex than many scientists realize.

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/PT.3.3463

In referees we trust

This thesis discusses the practitioners, sites, curriculums, apparatus and audiences of popular astronomy lecturing in nineteenth-century Britain. Lecturers who were active approximately between 1820 and 1860 are the focus. This thesis emphasises popularisers who were not scientific elites, including C. H. Adams (1803-1871), George Bartley (c. 1782-1858), and D. F. Walker (1778-1865). Activities of private popularisers are compared with those in scientific establishments, such as the Royal Institution. Private entrepreneurs were not inferior to institutional competitors and enjoyed popularity among audiences. Until the 1860s, popular astronomy lecturing was a shared arena of institutional and private popularisers. A theatrical turn occurred in the popular astronomy lecturing trade before 1820. Popularisers moved lectures into theatres and adopted theatrical facilities in performance. They developed large onstage devices, such as the transparent orrery, for achieving scenic and dramatic effects. These onstage astronomical lectures were a phenomenon in the early nineteenth century and were usually performed during Lent. This thesis highlights ‘commercial’ and ‘sublime’ features in popular astronomy lecturing of this period. The lecturing trade had an economic side involving paying, selling, profits and competitions in everyday practices. In addition to this material aspect, lectures also had emotional appeal. Lecturers exploited the sublime: the display of beautiful visual representations, the use of natural theology rhetoric, plus religious and moral reflections, all appealed for the sublimilty of the universe and the Creator behind it.

Commercial and Sublime: Popular Astronomy Lectures in Nineteenth Century Britain

The Age of Scientific Naturalism: Tyndall and His Contemporaries. By Bernard Lightman and Michael S. Reidy. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014. 256 pp. Hardcover $99.00.

Historians of science and religion usually trace the origins of the conflict thesis, the notion that science and religion have been in perennial conflict or warfare, to the historical narratives of John William Draper (1811-1882) and Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918). While Draper and White have been designated cofounders of the conflict thesis, there has been little research on how contemporaries responded to their narratives. This paper examines the early reception of these narratives by considering the extensive commentary they received in British and American periodicals from 1856 to 1900. Sampling a selection of this material suggests that while many rejected Draper and White's interpretation of the past, many others agreed with them in affirming that theological dogmatism came into conflict with the advance of human knowledge. This essay also suggests that Draper and White may have had a more nuanced position about the history of science and religion than has been contended by modern scholars. Whatever their intentions, however, their historical narratives had the unintended consequence of creating in the minds of their contemporaries and later generations the belief that science and religion have been and are at war.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0009640719000532

Science and religion in the Anglo-American periodical press, 1860-1900: A failed reconciliation

Relocating the conflict between science and religion at the foundations of the history of science

This paper contributes to the revisionist historiography on the legendary encounter between Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Henry Huxley at the 1860 meeting in Oxford of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. It discusses the contents of a series of letters written by John William Draper and his family reflecting on his experience at that meeting. The letters have recently been rediscovered and have been neither published nor examined at full length. After a preliminary discussion on the historiography of the Oxford debate, the paper discloses the contents of the letters and then assesses them in the light of other contemporary accounts. The letters offer a nuanced reinterpretation of the event that supports the growing move towards a revisionist account.

/pdf/a-yankee-at-oxford-john-william-draper-at-the-british-3fpxxnniyk.pdf

James C. Ungureanu

Papers

The Age of Scientific Naturalism: Tyndall and His Contemporaries. By Bernard Lightman and Michael S. Reidy. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014. 256 pp. Hardcover $99.00.

Science and religion in the Anglo-American periodical press, 1860-1900: A failed reconciliation

Relocating the conflict between science and religion at the foundations of the history of science

A Yankee at Oxford: John William Draper at the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford, 30 June 1860

Tyndall and Draper