Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 42 (2011) 235–239

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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

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Essay Review

How scientists stopped talking about science

Matthew StanleyGallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University, 1 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, United States

When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

Science for all: the popularization of science in early twentieth-century Britain. Peter J. Bowler; University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 2009, pp. xi + 339, Price US$45.00 cloth, ISBN:9780226068633.

1. Introduction

Denis Diderot was frustrated. In his 1754 Thoughts on the Inter-pretation of Nature, he wondered how great philosophers such asNewton could intentionally make their work difficult to under-stand. If natural philosophy were to change the world, these think-ers could not cut themselves off:

Let us hasten to popularise philosophy. If we want philosophersto lead the way, let us see that the public comes close to thepoint which the philosophers have reached. Will they say thatthere are works which can never be made accessible to ordinaryminds? (Diderot & Adams, 1999, p. 59)

It seems, perhaps, that we have not come very far since Diderot.There remains a sense today that scientists do not like to engagethe public with either the written word or speech. Einstein’s famousdesire to be a lighthouse keeper, isolated and cut off from the world,has apparently been embraced by scientists as a community (e.g.,Broks, 2006, pp. 26–38).

But as Peter Bowler’s new book Science for all: the popularizationof science in early twentieth-century Britain shows, it was not alwaysthis way. He argues that the social trend usually blamed for lack ofcommunication with the public—professionalization—did not nec-essarily have that effect. Indeed, the first generation of professionalscientists actively engaged with non-scientists in a variety of ways.In the decades before World War Two, a significant proportion ofthe scientific community in Britain (including a number of Ox-bridge dons) contributed to popular science. This, Bowler suggests,makes it hard to believe that there was any systematic disapproval

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from their peers for such activities. How, then, did this sociable sci-entific community turn into the laconic lab rats of today? Sciencefor All makes the case that understanding this transition requiresa detailed study of who was writing popular science, for what rea-sons, for what audience, and the critical influence of a rapidly-changing publishing industry.

Bowler argues that professional scientists (loosely meaningthose with paid positions) had a variety of reasons for writing fornon-scientists. A major issue was the relationship between scienceand religious belief, which was the topic of Bowler (2001). Sciencefor All only briefly discusses these religiously-focused works, justi-fiably referring the reader to the more specialized book. A secondmajor issue for popular science in the period was applied science,and particularly how new innovations were changing everyday life.Radio, X-rays, and radium were the subject of endless books andarticles. The interwar period in Britain is often portrayed as a nadirof interest in science and technology (e.g., Weiner, 1982), but Bow-ler follows David Edgerton in rejecting this. Edgerton (2006) sayshistorians have underestimated the extent to which British indus-try and military used science, and that ordinary people were wellaware of how applied science was transforming society. Explainingthese technological shifts and the role of religion in the modernworld were two major goals of contemporary scientists writingfor the public.

Not all scientists worked with such altruistic goals, however,and one of the major contributions of this book is a close analysisof the economic side of science popularization. Bowler provides de-tailed estimates of how much could be earned from writing. Thesalaries of science professors in this period were quite low—itwas still assumed that scientists were drawn from the upper clas-ses and had their own money. Annual salaries of scientists aver-aged around £600, and writing could bring in between £50 and100 each year. Many well-known popularizers (such as ArthurKeith) began writing early in their careers so they could supple-ment their meager incomes. The money earned varied with the

236 M. Stanley / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 42 (2011) 235–239

type of popularization as well. High-brow books brought in far lessthan mass-market magazines and newspapers.

2. On the edge of professional science

Occasionally the secondary career of writing would eclipse theprimary career of a research scientist, Julian Huxley being the clas-sic example. Science for All dedicates a significant amount of spaceto studying Huxley, and his anomalous case is quite valuable forteasing out the relationship between science professionalizationand popularization. He was, unquestionably, a professional scien-tist, holding first-class academic positions and conducting impor-tant biological research. He began writing for non-specialistsearly in his career (largely for high-quality magazines such as theAthenaeum), and gradually built a reputation as a scientist whocould communicate competently. Remarkably, he also found suc-cess writing for a range of audiences including lowbrow newspa-pers. It was not at all easy to develop a writing style that waseffective for both university graduates and the working class, andan important part of Huxley’s success was that he simply put inthe effort to do so (with his friend H.G. Wells providing useful ad-vice). Similarly, Huxley became closely involved in the unglamor-ous business side of writing. He hired an agent, worked closelywith publishers, and was always on the lookout for better pay-ment, reprints, translation opportunities, etc.

This culminated in his 1927 resignation from King’s CollegeLondon to concentrate on his writing. His scientific colleagueswere shocked, and Nature even wrote an editorial on the event.Prima facie, this might seem to be a classic example of a scientistbeing discouraged from undertaking popularization—Huxley failedto be made a Fellow of the Royal Society for many years until herejoined the professional community by taking a job at the LondonZoo. But Bowler argues that closer investigation reveals a morecomplicated situation. One issue was that older biologists weresuspicious of Huxley’s genetics and experimental work. A secondwas his willingness to write for newspapers and general interestmagazines rather than restricting himself to more elevated publi-cations read by the community of respectable university graduates.Even worse, he was happy to express controversial opinions andcomment on hot-button issues. In particular, he was an activemember of the Rationalist Press Association and promoted human-ism as an alternative to conventional religion. Bowler makes thecase that rather than Huxley’s career showing that professionalscientists were discouraged from science popularization, it showsthe precise issues that made certain kinds of popularizationdangerous: specifically, writing for the lower classes and involvingoneself with controversial subjects. It was fine to write, as long asthe image of the professional, objective, detached scientist wasmaintained.

Not all science writing was conducted by professional scientists,however, and Science for All explores the means by which non-specialists contributed. The professional/amateur split was lesswell developed in certain areas such as stargazing and natural his-tory, and amateurs could still present themselves as experts. Thestruggle for the right to speak authoritatively about science hadbeen underway for some decades by the beginning of twentiethcentury, as Bernard Lightman (2007) has documented. Like Bowler,Lightman problematizes the professionalization narrative byshowing in detail how certain groups resisted elite science. Popularscience proved to be an important zone for creating and defendingheterodox interpretations of science in the Victorian period.

In Bowler’s story we see similar non-professionals using writingand broadcasting to achieve the status of experts. Perhaps mostnotorious was ‘‘Professor’’ A.M. Low, an inventor and popular sci-ence writer. Low had a technical background from his work during

the Great War, but was never a professor—and scientists hated himfor using the title. His writing became popular after the war for hisenthusiasm for applied science, and he cobbled together a livingfrom patents, consulting work for industry, and writing. Bowler ar-gues that professional scientists particularly disliked him becauseof the image he projected. He sold himself as an individualistic,practical tinkerer, which was precisely the stereotype thatthe professionals hoped to transcend. Even worse, he was ananti-academic populist who relentlessly sought headlines anddeliberately refused to work within the established framework ofprofessional science. Low made the case that people should knowmore about the origins and implications of the technological devel-opments that were transforming their lives. To this end he foundedand edited the magazine Armchair Science, from which he generallyexcluded professional scientists (saying they could not describetheir work in everyday terms).

One of the most interesting themes in Science for All is theemergence of an alternative to professionals and amateurs in thewriting of popular science. This was the growth of science corre-spondents, pioneered by J. G. Crowther between the wars. The sta-tus quo was that few research scientists had time for a regular levelof commitment to newspaper writing, even if they had appropriatewriting skills. So when a science story hit the headlines, newspa-pers had to scramble to find experts who could comment. Crow-ther had begun writing for the Guardian in 1926 while workingfor the technical books section of Oxford University Press. Twoyears later he proposed to the newspaper’s editor that he be takenon as a regular science correspondent. Unfortunately no such posi-tion existed, and he had to undertake to invent it.

Crowther paid a great deal of attention to the social and literaryresources that would make him a productive science correspon-dent. He frequently consulted with working scientists to ensureaccuracy, and had an especially close relationship with the Caven-dish Laboratory. He regarded himself as a sort of unofficial pressagent for that lab, which also gave him access to exclusive informa-tion that allowed him scoops such as the discovery of the neutron.The techniques of science writing were very important to him, andhe wrote on the importance of communicating without jargon andthe need to find a picturesque image that allowed the reader tovisualize what was going on. He criticized those scientists (includ-ing J.B.S. Haldane) who tried to write for a broad audience withoutaccounting for the special skills needed. But it was not always easyfor Crowther to convince his editors that he had successfully trans-lated technical concepts into everyday language, and many of hispieces were sent back for being too technical. It also did not helphis relations with editors that he felt significantly underpaid andoften had his articles published without his byline.

Although he was not a scientist himself, Crowther had optimis-tic views about science that came through clearly in his writing.And as a Marxist, he paid a great deal of attention to the socialimplications of the material he was covering. His work was animportant component of the Social Relations of Science movement,in which left-wing scientists tried to mobilize popular science forsocial and political values (McGucken, 1984; Werskey, 1978).Crowther became the thin edge of the wedge that, Bowler argues,would end up reshaping the public understanding of science:increasingly, readers and listeners would get their informationfrom those outside the professional scientific community.

This transition was closely related to the issue of expertise inscience writing. But not all experts were created equal, nor wasthere a uniform desire for expertise. A critical distinction—bothfor Bowler and his historical actors—is the different levels of pop-ular science. Magazines for intellectuals were generally concernedto ensure that their analysis and commentary came from trainedscientists, while this was far less important for popular magazines

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and newspapers aimed at genuine men in the street. Many of theexperts in highbrow publications were professional scientists.The expansion of the university and college systems meant therewere many more scientists who could be approached for comment,and there was little opposition to scientists doing so from withintheir community. Promoting science seemed worthwhile so longas it did not distract from research and did not venture into contro-versial issues. These were the traps that caught Julian Huxley, andhe was even further criticized because he was a member of the sci-entific elite. This made him vulnerable to the charge of abandoningresearch, as opposed to low status scientists who were not ex-pected to make major contributions.

In addition to professional scientists, there were writers fromthe applied sciences who had expertise even though they wouldnot have been seen as ‘‘scientists’’ (e.g. a doctor or manager at anindustrial firm). When these writers spoke authoritatively in pub-lic, there were often tensions with research scientists. For example,traditional medical practitioners were often uncomfortable with orignorant of the new experimental biology of the interwar period.The public assumed doctors to be experts in all matters biological,but professional biologists were frustrated to see out-of-date infor-mation being passed on to unwitting readers. Regardless, editorswere often desperate to find experts of any sort, and embraced asliding scale of expertise as a matter of course.

Book publishers often had the luxury of relying on professionalscientists because they could charge high prices and still capture aprofitable portion of high education, high income readers.Magazines were targeted at a much wider range of readers andcould not pitch the technical content quite so high. It was verydifficult to make a science magazine pay in the interwar years,and such publications largely veered away from instruction intoentertainment.

This problem was magnified for newspapers, which had to ap-peal to virtually anyone. Newspaper publication had undergone amassive change at the turn of the century with an expanding lit-erate public (readers tripled between the wars) and technologicaladvancements that made cheap, well-illustrated papers common.This led to shorter articles and more emphasis on sensationalismand personalities. The exemplar was Tit-Bits, an immensely popu-lar paper that carried occasional items on science, usually un-signed, and often written by journalists or taken from otherpublications. Sometimes it featured short biographical studies ofscientists portraying them as selfless and dedicated, but the papermostly focused on ‘‘amazing facts.’’

This situation was not favorable for scientists used to writingheavy tomes for readers willing to work hard. Very few scientistsmastered the skills necessary to write for newspapers, and editorsusually did not want experts. If scientists could not write wellenough to sell papers, what did it matter if they were at the topof their field? A few scientists did try. Arthur Keith wrote for theEvening Standard and the Morning Post. The Daily Mail coveredHuxley’s research on hormones, and he offered to write some arti-cles, but the paper rejected them on the grounds that they were toodifficult. There was also a serious split between acceptable andunacceptable papers: professional scientists distinguished be-tween high quality papers and populist papers such as The DailyMail (to whose coverage of his work Arthur Eddington stronglyobjected).

Bowler repeatedly reminds us that science publishing was abusiness. The turn of the century saw an enormous surge in de-mand for popular science that was an unforeseen consequence ofthe success of near-universal secondary education in Britain. Dueto secondary, but not university, education becoming common,there was suddenly a large literate, interested population thathad few options for continuing their education. The 1902 Educa-tion Act formed Local Education Authorities that set up university

extension programs and encouraged private study. These studentswere particularly interested in authoritative education, and pub-lishers sought out professional scientists to provide this. Advertise-ments and reviews emphasized the importance of expertise andauthority. The relatively expensive books and magazines producedfor this market were largely highbrow and assumed a dedicatedreader.

Newspaper companies decided that there was room at the bot-tom of this price chart for expansion into an otherwise stable mar-ket. The difficulty was in striking the right balance betweenentertainment and education. Trying to appeal both to those look-ing for serious self-improvement and those looking for cheapentertainment was a recipe for disaster. Inhabiting the bottom por-tion of the price scale brought other challenges, including convinc-ing workers to spend their money on serious reading.

About 600 non-specialist science books were published in thefirst half of the twentieth century. The audience for any given bookwas fairly small, and a typical book was expected to sell about10,000 copies. Even a highly successful run of (say) 50,000 copieswas still only one copy for every thousand people, and most pop-ular science works only reached the middle classes and the mostactive portions of the lower classes. There were plenty of opportu-nities for those who wanted to learn science, but the vast majorityof the public had no interest.

It was the rare book that broke out into the general public. Anauthor needed to know how to write for a broad audience. Haldanesuggested using short sentences, selecting a few key points, usingactive not passive voice, personalizing the science, and bringingin references to everyday life and news items. The use of imageswas helpful as well. A full-on bestseller also required an authorwith an established public image who could write at the appropri-ate level, such as Eddington or James Jeans. It was also helpful if thescience being discussed could be connected to pressing religious orphilosophical issues (ironically, precisely the areas where scientistswere reluctant to venture). Even bestselling books often only accu-mulated large sale numbers over many years and many printings(such as Eddington’s Nature of the Physical World (1928)).

3. Scientists lose control

These economic and literary pressures eventually led scientiststo become victims of their own success. In their drive to markthemselves as professional and specialized, scientists unintention-ally convinced editors that they were so different from the publicthat they could not be part of a conversation. Further, the marketfor serious self-education literature (the arena of popularizationwhere scientist-authors were most successful) had collapsed, leav-ing little room for scientists in the world of popular science. Profes-sional scientists had essentially given up on communicating withthe public. In their place, the media had turned to science corre-spondents such as Crowther, who seemed to have as much exper-tise as necessary but who could also translate the latest results intothe vernacular. Prewar there had only been a handful of correspon-dents, but by 1947 there were enough to found their ownorganization.

In the decades after World War Two, scientists began to realizethat they had been replaced. Bowler argues that in an importantsense, scientists had lost control of the media—that is, they couldno longer assume that their ideas and opinions would be unpro-blematically passed on to the public. This was acceptable so longas the science correspondents were sympathetic to science, butthis became increasingly less true by the late 1960s. Over the years,the proportion of science writers with scientific training declined,and writers were more likely to articulate public concerns aboutscience than to support it.

238 M. Stanley / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 42 (2011) 235–239

When professional scientists realized that they no longer ledthe way in public understanding of science, they tried to reopenthe channels of authoritative information. But the world had chan-ged. The prewar genre of serious science literature had evaporated,and now popular science would only sell if there was significantentertainment value (which made it more unfashionable for scien-tists to try it). This was the result of two major factors: televisiontrained audiences to focus on the sensational and expect visuallyinteresting material; and the expansion of formal education waswhittling down the original audience for self-education literature.By the 1960s universities began to expand and grants were madeavailable so working classes could send their children to university.As Bowler says, they did not need self-ed books, they neededtextbooks.

Science for All argues that these developments seriously dis-rupted the involvement of the scientific community in the produc-tion of popular science. Scientists’ involvement became passive:they were approached and interviewed by journalists, and onlyrarely did a scientist get to make a television series of their own.This has changed recently, as scientists have again realized the va-lue (both social and financial) of a serious effort to engage with thepublic. This was clear to scientists at the beginning of the twenti-eth century, and they took advantage of the particular social con-ditions that made their writing possible. They only temporarilyabandoned the field due to shifts in those conditions.

4. Conclusion

All the way back to Diderot, there has been a sense that popu-larizing science will change the way people think about science(see Broks (2006) for of variety of case studies). This inevitablyraises the question: How should people think about science? Whatdo they need to know, and why?

Along these lines, I feel one of the most effective popular sciencebooks of the century was Arthur Eddington’s Stars and Atoms(1927). Not because it was beautifully written (though it was—vi-vid metaphors of atoms riding on sunbeams) or because it includedparticularly important information (though it did—the evolution ofstars). Rather, because it was deliberately unfinished:

I should have liked to have closed these lectures by leading upto some great climax. But perhaps it is more in accordance withthe true conditions of scientific progress that they should fizzleout with a glimpse of the obscurity which marks the frontiers ofpresent knowledge. (Eddington, 1927, p. 121)

This was intended to show that science as a discipline was neverfinished. It always had more to see and search for. Throughout hisbook, Eddington endeavored to show the process of science, not justits results. In particular, he wanted to show the ever-present obsta-cles, obscurities, and wrong turns. He described the deep difficultiesof talking about atoms and stellar interiors, given the impossibilityof seeing them directly. He narrated the shock of unexpected re-sults, the inevitable mistakes, and the ubiquity of incomplete infor-mation. The entire book was structured to show that ‘‘science is notjust a catalogue of ascertained facts about the universe; it is a modeof progress, sometimes tortuous, sometimes uncertain’’ (Eddington,1927, p. 53).

I think there can be no more important lesson to convey aboutscience. Popular science has traditionally focused on facts, knowl-edge, and fundamental concepts instead of the process of doing sci-ence, which strikes me as a major weakness. There are severalhistorical actors in Science for All who try to orient their work to-ward process rather than facts. One of the most interesting wasMary Adams, a Cambridge-trained biologist who was hired bythe BBC as a talks editor. She was dedicated to giving listeners an

impression of how science actually worked. She felt that most pop-ular science expected readers to take results on trust, and hoped tocounter this by getting scientists to explain how they came tothose results. The exemplar of her plans was the plant biologistNorman Walker, whose radio talks were not only informative butalso described how to do experiments at home.

It seems to me that misunderstanding the unfinished, perpetu-ally revised nature of science causes tremendous damage in thepublic sphere. People are baffled and frustrated when they are toldthat a new study shows wine is bad for you, but the old study saidit was good for you (Lyons, 2010). Why can’t the scientists justmake up their minds? This frustration quickly gives way to distrustof scientists in general, such as in the continuing controversy overvaccines and autism (Wente, 2010). One can see groups such asCreationists taking advantage of this as well: they point to theever-changing date of the oldest human ancestor and label scienceas unreliable and ephemeral (Lubenow, 2010). Similarly, they ar-gue against the evidence presented by Darwin in 1859, thinkingthat attacking the initial evidence for an idea will bring down thewhole structure (Comfort & Darwin, 2009). Both strategies (whichare highly effective with the public) rely on this same idea: revisionequals failure. Only a single, permanent statement of truth is valu-able. In contrast, Eddington argued (and I agree) that revisionequals success: something new has been learned. In an importantsense the ability to learn something new and build on it is the mostbasic element of science. Unfortunately this is not a fact that can bememorized, it is a state of mind—an attitude—that is very difficultto teach.

Scientists are, perhaps, victims of their own success. In the Vic-torian period they struggled to set themselves up as professionals,as experts with a particular kind of authority. At a fundamental le-vel this was a statement that science was set apart and different.Part of this strategy was promulgating what Stephen Hilgartner(1990) calls the ‘‘dominant model’’ of popularization—scientistsdevelop pure knowledge, which is then simplified and debasedas it is spread to the public. While there is now a large historiogra-phy showing the weaknesses of this view (Broks, 2006), it remainsa common belief among both scientists and their public audiences.This certainly gives scientists a great deal of authority, but alsoshades into a kind of scientific idolatry where scientists are incor-ruptible and infallible. The objectivity of true, certain, undoubtedscientists is contrasted with ordinary, fallible, corrupt people. Thedanger of this is that, of course, scientists are ordinary people,and promulgating the myth inevitably creates a crisis when it isuncovered. The inherent uncertainty of knowledge produced byscientists has been very successfully manipulated for the benefitof everyone from the tobacco industry to free-market ideologues(Oreskes & Conway, 2010).

Consider the recent firestorm around the pejoratively-named‘‘Climategate’’ incident, the hacking of emails of certain climate sci-entists (Adam, 2010; Pearce, 2010; Schmidt, 2010). The pilferedemails were largely free of indications of fraud or data manipula-tion, but they were full of pettiness: calling opponents ‘‘stupid,’’complaining about journal refereeing, anger at being criticized.These were then presented as evidence of a full-blown scandal.How can we trust scientists who call their critics names, or writenegative referee reports on papers with which they disagree? Ifidentical emails had been written by politicians or CEOs, no onewould be remotely surprised. They are only shocking if one expectsscientists to be creatures of pure reason without emotion or socialties. Scientists, then, would benefit greatly from admitting the veryhuman elements of their enterprise. These are not weaknesses.Science has achieved amazing things while still being uncertain,error-filled, and culturally influenced. Whatever methods are usedin the future to popularize science should embrace these aspects sothe public can have a more mature understanding of and debate

M. Stanley / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 42 (2011) 235–239 239

about scientific results. Popular science does not have to be perfectscience.

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Mordechai Feingold for his assistance.

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