The Social Appeal of the World of Science

1. Expansion of applied science
   • the successsful application of chemistry to industry, biology and medicine
     • ability to manipulate materials, processes, and products
       • new alloys and synthetic materials: celluloid and other plastics
       • dyes: Perkin's aniline mauve
       • explosives: nitrocellulose and dynamite
     • growth of the chemical industry and leadership in industrial science: petroleum,
     • chemical analysis of drugs, nutrients, bodily components, and physiology (Justus von Liebig)
     • new organic products
       • Liebig's "agricultural chemistry" and fertilizers
       • anesthesia, e.g. ether and chloroform
       • new drugs (e.g., chloral hydrate, morphine, cocaine), patent medicines, pharmaceuticals (e.g., aspirin from Bayer)
   • practical applications of physics, e.g. electrical industry
   • the human sciences
     • mathematical models of economics
     • empirical measurements of human traits, society
     • statistics applied to medicine and behavior, social issues
     • models of development of society
   • optimism for the continued advance of technology
     • sources of power
     • materials and chemical technology
     • mechanical devices -- labor and transport
     • grand civil engineering
     • medical breakthroughs
     • agricultural productivity
     • new organization of work and the workplace
     • heightened abilities -- precision, power, and efficacy
2. New institutions for public science:
   • Engineering education: Mining Academy [Bergakademie] at Freiberg (1765), École Polytechnique in Paris (1794)
   • German research universities (Ph.D. degree and laboratory training), e.g. Berlin (1810)
   • Institute labs, e.g. Royal Institution in London (1799)
   • government surveys (U.S., 1807), national laboratories and observatories (U.S., 1830), agencies, commissions, and patent offices
   • Evening public lectures and mechanics' institutes (1823) for continuing education
   • Exhibitions of wonders and inventions, e.g. The Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace (1851)
   • popular demand for science education and application
     • public education in science
     • texts and labs in university teaching
     • land-grant universities (1862)
     • science degrees and Ph.D.'s (University of London, 1857; Sheffield Scientific School [Yale], 1861)
     • the "research university" (The Johns Hopkins University,1876)
   • the rise of professional opportunities
     • university research (copying Liebig's lab for Ph.D. students)
     • government science
     • industrial research & development
3. The heroic image of the scientist, inventor, and technologist
   • the range and rate of inventions
   • new industries
   • "mechanical" agriculture
   • advances in chemical physiology, applied to agriculture and medicine
   • "scientific medicine" after 1860 (Claude Bernard in Paris; The Johns Hopkins University medical school)
   • the engineering ideal of manipulation and control
   • Samuel Smiles's Lives of the Engineers (1861) and Men of Invention and Industry (1884)
4. The turn to scientism: Science as the proper guide or answer
   • (social) statistics
   • historical theory
     • progressivism
     • historical determinism (hierarchies and destiny)
     • Marxism
   • human nature
     • criminal anthropology (Cesare Lombroso)
     • eugenics
     • psychology
   • explicit conflict with religion
     • loss of faith
     • spiritual alternatives
     • secularism
   • confluence with issues in Victorian society
     • growing nationalism and organization of the state
     • expanding industrialism and capitalism
     • optimism, confidence, and work-ethic
     • hierarchies of ethnocentrism, racism, sexism
     • changing practice and role of religion

© 2018 Dr. William Kimler