Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Series Editor: Bernard Lightman (York University); Editorial Board: Robert Brain (University of British Columbia); Pietro Corsi (University of Oxford); Shinjini Das (University of East Anglia); Fa-ti Fan (SUNY Binghamton); Bruce J. Hunt (University of Texas); Myles Jackson (Princeton Institute for Advanced Study); Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (University of Minnesota); Carlos López Beltrán (Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas/UNAM); Lynn K. Nyhart (University of Wisconsin–Madison); Michael A. Osborne (Oregon State University); Gregory Radick (University of Leeds); Marc Rothenberg (Smithsonian Institution Archives); Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge); Jutta Schickore (Indiana University); Efram Sera-Shriar (Durham University & University of Copenhagen); Ann Shteir (York University); Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford); Robert Smith (University of Alberta); Jonathan R. Topham (University of Leeds)

An era of exciting and transformative scientific discoveries, the nineteenth century was also a period when significant features of the relationship between contemporary science and culture first assumed form. This book series includes studies of major developments within the disciplines—including geology, biology, botany, astronomy, physics, chemistry, medicine, technology, and mathematics—as well as themes within the social sciences, natural philosophy, natural history, the alternative sciences, and popular science. In addition, books in the series may examine science in relation to one or more of its many contexts, including literature, politics, religion, class, gender, colonialism and imperialism, material culture, and visual and print culture.

Scientific Advice to the Nineteenth-Century British State Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 420
ISBN: 9780822947905
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2024
Description:
In twenty-first-century Britain, scientific advice to government is highly organized, integrated across government departments, and led by a chief scientific adviser who reports directly to the prime minister. But at the end of the eighteenth century, when Roland Jackson’s account begins, things were very different. With this book, Jackson turns his attention to the men of science of the day—who derived their knowledge of the natural world from experience, observation, and experiment—focusing on the essential role they played in proffering scientific advice to the state, and the impact of that advice on public policy.
Evolutions and Religious Traditions in the Long Nineteenth Century Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 400
ISBN: 9780822947929
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2024
Description:
Before the advent of radio, conceptions of the relationship between science and religion circulated through periodicals, journals, and books, influencing the worldviews of intellectuals and a wider public. In this volume, historians of science and religion examine that relationship through diverse mediums, geographic contexts, and religious traditions. Spanning within and beyond Europe and North America, chapters emphasize underexamined regions—New Zealand, Australia, India, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire—and major religions of the world, including Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam; interactions between those traditions; as well as atheism, monism, and agnosticism.
Making Entomologists Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 252
ISBN: 9780822947516
Pub Date: 06 Dec 2022
Description:
Popular natural history periodicals in the nineteenth century had an incredible democratizing power. By welcoming contributions from correspondents regardless of their background, they posed a significant threat to those who considered themselves to be gatekeepers of elite science, and who in turn used their own periodicals to shape more exclusive communities. Making Entomologists reassesses the landscape of science participation in the nineteenth century, offering a more nuanced analysis of the supposed amateur-professional divide that resonates with the rise of citizen science today.
Psychic Investigators Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 236
ISBN: 9780822947073
Pub Date: 28 Sep 2022
Description:
Psychic Investigators examines British anthropology’s engagement with the modern spiritualist movement during the late Victorian era. Efram Sera-Shriar argues that debates over the existence of ghosts and psychical powers were at the center of anthropological discussions on human beliefs. He focuses on the importance of establishing credible witnesses of spirit and psychic phenomena in the writings of anthropologists such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Edward Burnett Tylor, Andrew Lang, and Edward Clodd.
Victorian Science and Imagery Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9780822946533
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2021
Illustrations: 85 b&w
Description:
The nineteenth century was a period of science and imagery: when scientific theories and discoveries challenged longstanding boundaries between animal, plant, and human, and art and visual culture produced new notions about the place of the human in the natural world. Just as scientists relied on graphic representation to conceptualize their ideas, artists moved seamlessly between scientific debate and creative expression to support or contradict popular scientific theories, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution and sexual selection, deliberately drawing on concepts in ways that allowed them to refute popular claims or disrupt conventional knowledges. Focusing on the close kinship between the arts and sciences during the Victorian period, the art historians contributing to this volume reveal the unique ways in which nineteenth-century British and American visual culture participated in making science - and in which science informed art at a crucial moment in the history of the development of the modern world.
Imperial Bodies in London Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9780822946861
Pub Date: 28 Dec 2021
Description:
Since at least the eighteenth century, European administrators and officers, military men, soldiers, missionaries, doctors, wives, and servants moved back and forth between Britain and its growing imperial territories. The introduction of steam-powered vessels and deep-docks to accommodate them at London ports significantly reduced travel time for colonists and imperial servants travelling home to see their families, to enjoy a period of study leave, or to recuperate from the tropics. With their minds enervated by the sun, livers disrupted by the heat, and blood teeming with parasites, these patients brought the empire home and, in doing so, transformed medicine in Britain.
Symbols and Things Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 330
ISBN: 9780822946830
Pub Date: 28 Dec 2021
Description:
In the steam-powered mechanical age of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the work of late Georgian and early Victorian mathematicians came to depend on far more than the properties of number. British mathematicians came to rely on industrialized paper and pen manufacture, railways and mail, and the print industries of the book, disciplinary journal, magazine, and newspaper. Although not always physically present with one another, the characters central to this book—from George Green to William Rowan Hamilton—relied heavily on communication technologies as they developed their theories in consort with colleagues.
The Voice of Science Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 300
ISBN: 9780822946816
Pub Date: 28 Dec 2021
Description:
For many in the nineteenth century, the spoken word had a vivacity and power that exceeded other modes of communication. This conviction helped to sustain a diverse and dynamic lecture culture that provided a crucial vehicle for shaping and contesting cultural norms and beliefs. As science increasingly became part of public culture and debate, its spokespersons recognized the need to harness the presumed power of public speech to recommend the moral relevance of scientific ideas and attitudes.
Explorations in the Icy North Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9780822946595
Pub Date: 05 Aug 2021
Illustrations: 19 photos
Description:
Science in the Arctic changed dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century, when early, scattered attempts in the region to gather knowledge about all aspects of the natural world transitioned to a more unified Arctic science under the First International Polar Year in 1882. The IPY brought together researchers from multiple countries with the aim of undertaking systematic and coordinated experiments and observations in the Arctic and Antarctic. Harsh conditions, intense isolation, and acute danger inevitably impacted the making and communicating of scientific knowledge.
The Making of Modern Anthrax, 1875-1920 Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9780822966494
Pub Date: 28 Jun 2021
Description:
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards a number of previously unknown conditions were recorded in both animals and humans. Known by a variety of names, and found in diverse locations, by the end of the century these diseases were united under the banner of "anthrax." Stark offers a fresh perspective on the history of infectious disease.
Uncommon Contexts: Encounters between Science and Literature, 1800-1914 Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780822966418
Pub Date: 28 Jun 2021
Description:
Britain in the long nineteenth century developed an increasing interest in science of all kinds. Whilst poets and novelists took inspiration from technical and scientific innovations, those directly engaged in these new disciplines relied on literary techniques to communicate their discoveries to a wider audience. The essays in this collection uncover this symbiotic relationship between literature and science, at the same time bridging the disciplinary gulf between the history of science and literary studies.
Typhoid in Uppingham Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9780822966456
Pub Date: 28 Jun 2021
Description:
After the Public Heath Acts of 1872 and 1875, British local authorities bore statutory obligations to carry out sanitary improvements. Richardson explores public health strategy and central-local government relations during the mid-nineteenth-century, using the experience of Uppingham, England, as a micro-historical case study. Uppingham is a small (and unusually well-documented) market town which contains a boarding school.
The Transit of Venus Enterprise in Victorian Britain Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 232
ISBN: 9780822966449
Pub Date: 28 Jun 2021
Description:
In the nineteenth century, the British Government spent money measuring the distance between the earth and the sun using observations of the transit of Venus. This book presents a narrative of the two Victorian transit programmes. It draws out their cultural significance and explores the nature of "big science" in late-Victorian Britain.
The Science of History in Victorian Britain Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 248
ISBN: 9780822966364
Pub Date: 28 Jun 2021
Description:
New attitudes towards history in nineteenth-century Britain saw a rejection of romantic, literary techniques in favour of a professionalized, scientific methodology. The development of history as a scientific discipline was undertaken by several key historians of the Victorian period, influenced by German scientific history and British natural philosophy. This study examines parallels between the professionalization of both history and science at the time, which have previously been overlooked.
The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870-1914 Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9780822966388
Pub Date: 28 Jun 2021
Description:
By the late nineteenth century, advances in medical knowledge, technology and pharmaceuticals led to the development of a thriving commercial industry. The medical trade catalogue became one of the most important means of promoting the latest tools and techniques to practitioners. Drawing on over 400 catalogues produced between 1870 and 1914, Jones presents a study of the changing nature of medical professionalism.
Natural History Societies and Civic Culture in Victorian Scotland Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 248
ISBN: 9780822966357
Pub Date: 28 Jun 2021
Description:
Winner of the Frank Watson Prize in Scottish History, 2011 The relationship between science and civil society is essential to our understanding of cultural change during the Victorian era. Science was frequently packaged as an appropriate form of civic culture, inculcating virtues necessary for civic progress. In turn, civic culture was presented as an appropriate context for enabling and supporting scientific progress.