Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain ebook

by Peter J. Bowler

Scientists found it easy and profitable to write for this audience, Bowler reveals, and because their work was seen as educational, they faced no hostility from their peers

Science for All debunks this apocryphal notion.

Science for All debunks this apocryphal notion. Peter J. Bowler surveys the books, serial works, magazines, and newspapers published between 1900 and the outbreak of World War II to show that practicing scientists were very active in writing about their work for a general readership.

Peter J. Bowler surveys the books, serial works, magazines, and newspapers published between 1900 .

Read unlimited books and audiobooks on the web, iPad, iPhone and Android. Scientists found it easy and profitable to write for this audience, Bowler reveals, and because their work was seen as educational, they faced no hostility from their peers.

Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain (Chicago, 2009). PJ Bowler Science For All, Chicago Univ Press 2009 Archived 4 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine. Q&A Darwin: Off the Record (with foreword by Richard Dawkins) (Duncan Baird, 2010). Darwin Deleted: Imagining a World Without Darwin (University of Chicago Press, 2013). BBC Radio Ulster TalkBack, broadcast 15 September 2008. BBC Radio Ulster Sunday Sequence, broadcast 2 December 2007. Churchill, Frederick B. (January 1990). The Mendelian Revolution.

1 For a general description of popular science in the period see Bowler, Peter . Science for All: The Popularization of. .Peter . ‘Discovering science from an armchair: popular science in British magazines of the interwar years’, Annals of Science (2016) 73, pp. 89–107. Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. 2 For details see Love, Bert and Gamble, Jim, The Meccano System and the Special Purpose Meccano Sets, London: New Cavendish Books, 1986.

Not so, says Peter Bowler in this wide-ranging study of popular science in Britain. Bowler makes a strong case for this interesting correction to the cultural history of science. Although their work may not have endured, if you look seriously you can easily find hundreds of scientists who worked hard at science writing in the first half of the past century - and often earned a decent bit of extra cash in the process.

Similar books and articles. Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early TwentiethCentury Britain. Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus, Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey. Science For All: The Popularization of Science in Early TwentiethCentury Britain. Xiii + 479 P. Illus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Bowler at the 2007 History of Science Society meeting Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain. Bowler at the 2007 History of Science Society meeting. Bowler (born 8 October 1944) is a historian of biology who has written extensively on the history of evolutionary thought, the history of the environmental sciences, and on the history of genetics.

Recent scholarship has revealed that pioneering Victorian scientists endeavored through voluminous writing to raise public interest in science and its implications. But it has generally been assumed that once science became a profession around the turn of the century, this new generation of scientists turned its collective back on public outreach. Science for All debunks this apocryphal notion.

Peter J. Bowler surveys the books, serial works, magazines, and newspapers published between 1900 and the outbreak of World War II to show that practicing scientists were very active in writing about their work for a general readership. Science for All argues that the social environment of early twentieth-century Britain created a substantial market for science books and magazines aimed at those who had benefited from better secondary education but could not access higher learning. Scientists found it easy and profitable to write for this audience, Bowler reveals, and because their work was seen as educational, they faced no hostility from their peers. But when admission to colleges and universities became more accessible in the 1960s, this market diminished and professional scientists began to lose interest in writing at the nonspecialist level.

Eagerly anticipated by scholars of scientific engagement throughout the ages, Science for All sheds light on our own era and the continuing tension between science and public understanding.