“Popular Science in Early Chinese Periodicals: The Ladies’ Journal (Funü zazhi) and the May Fourth transition, 1915-1925”

Hsiang-Fu Huang (Academia Sinica)

The Ladies' Journal (Funü zazhi), published by the Commercial Press in Shanghai, was the most prominent women’s magazine in early twentieth-century China. In addition to discussing women's issues, the journal also aimed to promote "useful" scientific knowledge to female readers. It contained a wide spectrum of popular science coverage ranging from chemistry to horticulture. Most of the authors or translators were non-elite popularizers rather than specialists who received formal scientific training. Their writings can be analyzed in both the contexts of "Epic Agenda" (to promote women's learning in the service of the nation) and "Everyday Agenda" (to enhance quotidian household life through new scientific knowledge and educational methods). This paper analyzes the science coverage in The Ladies' Journal as a specimen of the complex transformation in Chinese society and culture during the May Fourth era. The outbreak of the May Fourth Movement in 1919 made a significant impact on the direction of The Ladies' Journal. The journal had a series of reforms to its editorial staff and theme, making a shift from the education of household knowledge to the promotion of women's liberation. This shift, however, undermined its science coverage to some extent.

“Poetic Science: Popularizing Scientific Knowledge through Verse”

Melanie Kiechle (Virginia Tech)

In the nineteenth-century United States, a number of popular scientific and medical journals aimed to appeal to audiences of both educated lay people and trained scientists. Poetry on scientific topics often made its way into publications such as Manufacturer and Builder and The Sanitarian, in between articles that detailed the most recent scientific and medical discoveries. These poems were often poor by literary standards but, like the articles they were published alongside, shared recent discoveries and promoted new actions. The perils of improper plumbing appeared in verse, as did miasmas, germs, and disinfectants.

Scientific topics also made their way into the poetry published in popular journals such as Harper’s Weekly and Godey’s Lady’s Book, where the authors were primarily popular poets rather than scientists and physicians. Despite the difference of authors, these poems covered similar topics and were widely reprinted, disseminating discoveries and recommending new behaviors to the middle-class audiences of these publications.

This paper argues that poems popularized science through their very form. Simple meter and rhyme facilitated memorization and recitation, a common method of instruction in schools. Poetry, like formal articles, was also a space for debate: dissenters responded in verse, challenging new knowledge through reference to the efficacy of traditional methods. By following discussions of new knowledge through the poems of trade and popular journals, we can see how scientific knowledge entered high- and low-brow culture by appealing to existent practices, engaging humor, and employing dialectic.

“Biologizing the Synthetic A Priori: Ernst Mach and Popularization as Epistemic Practice”

Zachary Barr (University of Chicago)

This paper examines Ernst Mach’s popular works, situating them within the context of his broader attempts to articulate a fully naturalized epistemology. More specifically, this paper first examines Mach’s vision of scientific knowledge and method as social and biological phenomena, whose legitimacy was to be judged in terms of utility rather than truth. The paper then tracks the ways in which this perspective on knowledge and scientific practice informed his views on popularization, arguing that he construed the latter as a scientifically important and productive form of mediation and translation between experts and non-experts. The paper concludes by arguing that Mach's perspective on popularization was symptomatic of a politically inflected vision of how the scientific community should be structured, which perspectives should be included in making and evaluating scientific knowledge, and which should be excluded.

“From Christian to Capitalist: How popular science for children instilled societal norms and morals”

Michael Laurentius (Department of Science and Technology Studies, York University, Canada)

What is the purpose of science education and literature for children? Within this paper, I will argue that science popularisation aimed at children was one of prescribing and (re-)enforcing social norms and morals, rather than simply a means of interrogating the natural world. To do so, I will focus on the late Victorian and the early to mid-Cold War eras within the Anglo-American sphere of culture and influence. Through examining a variety of primary and secondary sources, I found a remarkably similar character in the moralising tones used throughout science popularisation. The chief difference being that within the Victorian context, science popularisation sought to encourage the construction of the good Christian, while within the Cold War context, the goal was rather the good citizen, steeped in modernist, liberal American ideals.

My thematic comparison will be three-fold. Firstly, the moral and ideological framing of science popularisation with its focus on the construction of the image of the naturalist/scientist. Secondly, the gendered nature of science and science popularisation during both periods; how was science overwhelming and even aggressively framed as a masculine pursuit and what role existed within it for girls and women? Lastly, I will examine how edutainment and the spectacle were intimately intertwined with science popularisation, as well as their approach to the notion and purpose of childhood? Ultimately, this paper seeks to use the growing literature found within the study of Victorian print and science culture as a historiographical framework to approach similar topics within the Cold War period.