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The Popularization of Science in Nineteenth-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Hyman Kuritz
Hyman Kuritz*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
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Extract

The popularization of science in nineteenth-century America is inseparable from the democratization of Western society in the early modern era. The contempt for labor that characterized the medieval attitude was gradually replaced by a new spirit whose roots go back to at least the twelfth century and which accompanied the rise in economic importance of the skilled craftsman and mechanic in a modernizing economy. The new importance of the artisan-mechanic to the economy forced a reconsideration of the proper relationship between the artisan and the scientist. The association of knowledge with its applications — its utility—was interwoven with a growing self-conception that the productions of the craftsman and the mechanic made possible a grasp of regularities and order in nature hitherto not even so conceptualized. Advances in techniques and in the material conditions of life were accompanied by corresponding changes in the perception and conceptualization of nature and society. The artisan achieved a new and elevated status of dignity and place. He worked in close collaboration with scientists, and frequently the distinctions between them were blurred and undefined.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , Fall 1981 , pp. 259 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

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19. This need for a new consensus was felt much more urgently in England where class divisions in the early nineteenth century were so much wider. The A.R.Y.U. in 1861 stated that mechanics' institutes “…afford an admirable common ground whereon the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant might meet, might learn to understand each other better, and perhaps to respect each other more. The greatest social evil of the present day is the isolation between the employer and the employed. Indifference to each others' interests is the normal condition of their relation and active hostility in the form of strikes has of late years become a painfully frequent feature of the time.” Quoted in Harrison, J. F. C., Learning and Living, 1790–1960. A Study in the History of the English Adult Education Movement (London, 1961), pp. 75–76. See also Bennett, Charles A., History of Manual and Industrial Education Up to 1870 (Peoria, Illinois, 1926), pp. 333, 335, Tyrell, A., “Political Economy: Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review, 48 (October 1969): 155–58.Google Scholar

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39. Bache was a graduate of West Point, became a member of the faculty for one year, and after two years with the Army's scientific corps, came to Philadelphia in 1828 to teach natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Bache's career is closely connected to the professionalization of science in America. Sinclair, Bruce, Philosopher Mechanics, pp. 149–51.Google Scholar

40. Wistar, Caspar (1761–1818) was a Quaker physician and Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania. The British traveler, Hamilton, Thomas, made some very interesting observations about these parties: “These parties bring together men of different pursuits, and promote the free interchange of opinion, always useful for the correction of prejudice. Such intercourse, too, prevents the narrowness of thought, and exaggerated estimate of the value of our own peculiar acquirements, which devotion to one exclusive object is apt to engender in those who do not mix freely with the world.Google Scholar

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At these parties I met several ingenious men of a class something below that of the ordinary members. When any operative mechanic attracts notice by his zeal for improvement in any branch of science, he is almost uniformly invited to the Wistar meetings. The advantage of this policy is obviously very great. A modest and deserving man is brought into notice. His errors are corrected, his ardour is stimulated, his taste improved. A healthy connexion is kept up between the different classes of society and the feeling of mutual sympathy is duly cherished. During my stay in Philadelphia I was present at several of these Wistar meetings, and always returned from them with increased conviction of their beneficial tendency.” Men and Manners in America, two vols. in one (1833); (reprint ed., New York 1968), I, pp. 340–43, quoted in Reingold, , Henry II (1975), pp. 110–111.Google Scholar

41. This influence can be traced in the following: Wilson Smith, E., Professors and Public Ethics: Studies of Northern Moral Philosophers Before the Civil War (Ithaca 1956); Meyer, Donald, “The American Moralists: Academic Moral Philosphers in the United States, 1830–1880” (Ph.D., University of California: Berkeley, 1967); Howe, Daniel Walker, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805–1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).Google Scholar

42. Davie, George E., “The Social Significance of the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense,” (The Dow Lecture: University of Dundee, November 30, 1972 [pub. 1973], pp. 6–8; see also his The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and Her Universities in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1961); Shapin, Steven, “The Audience for Science In Eighteenth Century Edinburgh,” History of Science, 12 (1974): 95–121; Chitnis, Amand C., The Scottish Enlightenment: A Social History (Totowa, New Jersey, 1976).Google Scholar

43. Introductory Lectures on Chemistry” [January-March 1832], in Reingold, , Henry, I (1972), pp. 383–95. Reingold conjectures that Henry probably resented the prestige of mechanics and inventors in the nineteenth century and the relatively lowly place of the scientist. The relationship of science to technology is still one of the unresolved problems in the history of science. See also Layton, Edwin T. Jr., “Technology As Knowledge,” Technology and Culture, 15 (January 1974): 31–41.Google Scholar

44. The American Journal of Education, I (August 1855): 17–31.Google Scholar