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ROBERT CHAMBERS'S VISION OF SCIENCE:...

HUTCHINSON, GOV.

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ROBERT CHAMBERS'S VISION OF SCIENCE: THE DIFFUSION OF SCIENTIFIC IDEAS TO THE GENERAL READER IN EARLY-VICTORIAN BRITAIN.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	ROBERT CHAMBERS'S VISION OF SCIENCE: THE DIFFUSION OF SCIENTIFIC IDEAS TO THE GENERAL READER IN EARLY-VICTORIAN BRITAIN./
Author:	HUTCHINSON, GOV.
Description:	337 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-05, Section: A, page: 2243.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International41-05A.
Subject:	History, Modern. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=8025135

ROBERT CHAMBERS'S VISION OF SCIENCE: THE DIFFUSION OF SCIENTIFIC IDEAS TO THE GENERAL READER IN EARLY-VICTORIAN BRITAIN.
HUTCHINSON, GOV.

ROBERT CHAMBERS'S VISION OF SCIENCE: THE DIFFUSION OF SCIENTIFIC IDEAS TO THE GENERAL READER IN EARLY-VICTORIAN BRITAIN. - 337 p.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-05, Section: A, page: 2243.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Temple University, 1980.

The popular press in early Victorian Britain served a valuable function in disseminating a fundamental knowledge of scientific concepts and information to vast audiences of slightly educated readers who lacked any previous scientific knowledge. Although many English periodicals in the years preceding Darwin's Origin of Species were filled with learned accounts of evolution and other scientific matters, most of these only reached educated readers. For those who possessed mechanical aptitudes or who liked to dabble in elementary scientific experiments there were popular science and popular mechanics journals. Other periodicals catered to the special interests of amateur naturalists and scientific dilettantes, and academic journals had their exclusive followings. But very few of the early Victorian periodicals popularized science for the general reader. Of the few who tried, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal and the Penny Magazine were the most successful. The Penny was an immediate success (1832) and quickly reached record circulations, but within five years of its inception it had begun to deline. Chambers's Journal also achieved instant popularity but managed to flourish for well over a century. Its early years--1832-1859--were significant ones for the "improving" literature movement of which the Journal and the Penny were outstanding examples. And it is within the pages of the Journal, especially, that a picture of science as it was then understood takes shape. This image of science was due almost entirely to the efforts of the Journal's editor, Robert Chambers. A man of little formal education, Robert Chambers was a talented and entertaining writer, and possessed great enthusiasm for the mysteries of science, which he believed were revealed to man as evidence of God's design in Nature. The anonymous author of the outstandingly successful Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), Chambers was heavily imbued with the tenets of the Rev. William Paley's Natural Theology, and was convinced that an important purpose of science was to disclose the workings of the Creator. Chambers's teleological and theological convictions are frequently echoed in the Journal, and many of its articles on science are liberally sprinkled with overt references to Divine Providence.Subjects--Topical Terms:

516334
History, Modern.

ROBERT CHAMBERS'S VISION OF SCIENCE: THE DIFFUSION OF SCIENTIFIC IDEAS TO THE GENERAL READER IN EARLY-VICTORIAN BRITAIN.
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100 1 $a HUTCHINSON, GOV. $3 1950674
245 1 0 $a ROBERT CHAMBERS'S VISION OF SCIENCE: THE DIFFUSION OF SCIENTIFIC IDEAS TO THE GENERAL READER IN EARLY-VICTORIAN BRITAIN.
300 $a 337 p.
500 $a Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-05, Section: A, page: 2243.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--Temple University, 1980.
520 $a The popular press in early Victorian Britain served a valuable function in disseminating a fundamental knowledge of scientific concepts and information to vast audiences of slightly educated readers who lacked any previous scientific knowledge. Although many English periodicals in the years preceding Darwin's Origin of Species were filled with learned accounts of evolution and other scientific matters, most of these only reached educated readers. For those who possessed mechanical aptitudes or who liked to dabble in elementary scientific experiments there were popular science and popular mechanics journals. Other periodicals catered to the special interests of amateur naturalists and scientific dilettantes, and academic journals had their exclusive followings. But very few of the early Victorian periodicals popularized science for the general reader. Of the few who tried, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal and the Penny Magazine were the most successful. The Penny was an immediate success (1832) and quickly reached record circulations, but within five years of its inception it had begun to deline. Chambers's Journal also achieved instant popularity but managed to flourish for well over a century. Its early years--1832-1859--were significant ones for the "improving" literature movement of which the Journal and the Penny were outstanding examples. And it is within the pages of the Journal, especially, that a picture of science as it was then understood takes shape. This image of science was due almost entirely to the efforts of the Journal's editor, Robert Chambers. A man of little formal education, Robert Chambers was a talented and entertaining writer, and possessed great enthusiasm for the mysteries of science, which he believed were revealed to man as evidence of God's design in Nature. The anonymous author of the outstandingly successful Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), Chambers was heavily imbued with the tenets of the Rev. William Paley's Natural Theology, and was convinced that an important purpose of science was to disclose the workings of the Creator. Chambers's teleological and theological convictions are frequently echoed in the Journal, and many of its articles on science are liberally sprinkled with overt references to Divine Providence.
520 $a The effectiveness of the Journal's emphasis on popular science may be attributed to Robert Chambers's knack in presenting science as entertainment. An accomplished essayist and the writer of numerous books about literature and history, Robert Chambers possessed an ability to simplify the abstruse by analogy and anecdote, and to incorporate elements of romance, mystery, and escape in his explications of the emerging wonders of nineteenth-century science.
520 $a Although the Journal's science articles reflect an interest in all natural sciences, and include such then popular topics as phrenology, animal magnetism, and the early nineteenth-century fascination with electricity, biological and medical interests dominate much of the Journal's science writing. Ranging widely from public health matters to explanations of elementary physiology, the Journal's "medical" articles discussed such things as the dangers of "bad" air, the value of proper diet, and the necessity for smallpox vaccinations. In so doing the Journal revealed much about the common medical beliefs of the time.
520 $a In the years before the publication of Darwin's Origin and before the growing distinction between the scientific amateur and professional became apparent, Chambers's enthusiastic and entertaining accounts in the Journal often provided the reader of limited education the only view of science that he ever received or could understand; thus he gave the early Victorian public reliable, simplified accounts of the basic ideas of nineteenth-century science and left present-day historians an invaluable account of popular science in the first half of the nineteenth century.
590 $a School code: 0225.
650 4 $a History, Modern. $3 516334
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710 2 0 $a Temple University. $3 959342
773 0 $t Dissertation Abstracts International $g 41-05A.
790 $a 0225
791 $a Ph.D.
792 $a 1980
856 4 0 $u http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=8025135