Entranced by the Factory

Simon Schaffer

  • The Natural Philosophy of James Clerk Maxwell by P.M. Harman
    Cambridge, 232 pp, £35.00, April 1998, ISBN 0 521 56102 7

Late 20th-century sciences are publicised through hands-on exhibitions, press conferences, chat shows and interactive CD-Roms. The Victorians had a different system and, as usual, painstakingly classified it. There was the conversazione and the soirée; the grand lecture and the subscription dinner; the amateur society and the private club; above all, there were periodicals and public museums. Whether at the Crystal Palace, the Athenaeum or the local working men’s college, disseminating science was as much a moral as a material issue, since understanding the Creation might yield principles of ethics as well as mastery of nature.

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