Monthly Archives: February 2014

From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences: Writing the History of Nineteenth-Century Science

David Cahan’s (ed.) From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences (2003) takes stock of current historiography of the sciences in the “long nineteenth century.” In his Introduction, “looking at nineteenth-century science,” Cahan declares that “the study of nineteenth century science is flourishing.” During the nineteenth century, “the scientific enterprise underwent enormous and unprecedented intellectual and social […]

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The Triumph of Time: A Study of the Victorian Concepts of Time, History, Progress, and Decadence

Jerome Hamilton Buckley’s The Triumph of Time (1966) is a “little book” with an enormous and exceedingly complex subject. It pretends to be no less than a survey of Victorians’ attitudes towards time. Buckley proposes to “test the truth” of John Stuart Mill’s suggestion, articulated in his The Spirit of the Ages (1831), that his own […]

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Publishing Conflict

In 1873, John William Draper began writing his History of the Conflict between Science and Religion (1874). Draper did so at the request of Edward Livingston Youmans (1821-1887), America’s premier science popularizer and founder of Popular Science magazine (1872). As editor of the International Scientific Series, Youmans asked for Draper’s contribution. Later, Youmans brother, William […]

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Taking Long Views (1887), by May Kendall

His locks were wild, and wild his eye, Furrowed his brow with anxious thought. Musing I asked him: “Tell me why You look thus vacant and distraught?” Sadly he gazed into my face: He said, “I have no respite, none! Oh, shall we wander into space Or fall into the sun? “Astronomers I’ve sought in […]

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Victorian Science in Context

“Victorians of every rank, at many sites, in many ways, defined knowledge, ordered nature, and practiced science.” This introductory remark, in Bernard Lightman’s Victorian Science in Context (1997), unveils the aim of the volume as a whole. Presented as a series of connected vignettes, it focuses on the local and the contingent. Situating a range […]

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The Agnostic Theology of Huxley and Tyndall

Earlier today I read Bernard Lightman’s short essay “Does the History of Science and Religion Change Depending on the Narrator? Some Atheist and Agnostic Perspectives” (2012) as a break from reading his edited volume Victorian Science in Context (1997). It was, as expected, excellent. Lightman’s answer is a resounding yes. In his estimation, “during the […]

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