Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Communicating Science In
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MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 2009 PREPRINT 385 Arne Schirrmacher (ed.) Communicating Science in 20th Century Europe A Survey on Research and Comparative Perspectives Table of Contents Introduction 3 I. Science Imprints: Science Content and Genres of Newspapers, Journals and Books 1. Methodological and historiographical reflections on the use of newspapers in the history of science: The Greek case, 1900-1910 9 Faidra Papanelopoulou / Eirini Mergoupi-Savaidou / Spyros Tzokas 2. What can news about earthquakes, volcanoes and eclipses tell us? Science in the Portuguese press at the beginning of the 20th century 27 Ana Simões / Ana Carneiro / Paula Diogo 3. Representations of radium and radioactivity in the Spanish Jesuit magazine Ibérica, 1914-1936 45 Nestor Herran 4. Some notes on the popularization of quantum and atomic physics in Spain, 1914-1927 61 María C. Boscá II. 20th Century Publishing and Learning Phenomena 5. The popularization of science in Spain around 1900: New sources, new questions 77 Agustí Nieto-Galán 6. New initiatives in popular science publishing in early twentieth-century Britain 85 Peter J. Bowler 7. Teaching and learning Science in Hungary: schools, personalities, influences 1867-1945 93 Tibor Frank 8. Popularization of science in Poland before and after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc 119 Jarosław Włodarczyk III. Science Communication as Political Tool 9. A Soviet scientific public sphere: From Lenin to Khrushchev’s times in Soviet Russia, 1917-1964 129 James T. Andrews 10. Science for the masses. The political background of Polish and Soviet science popularization in the post-war period 133 Leszek Zasztowt 1 Table of Contents 11. Public policies of publicisation of science in post-war France. Toward a "state affair" 147 Andrée Bergeron 12. Atapuerca – the making of a magic mountain. Popular science books and human-origins-research in contemporary Spain 149 Oliver Hochadel IV. Beyond Print: Science Communication in the Early Audio-Visual Age 13. State-controlled multimedia education for all? Science programs in early German radio 167 Arne Schirrmacher 14. Science in the French popular media in the 1930s and 40s: radio, songs and cabaret 187 Daniel Raichvarg V. Appendix: Towards New Perspectives in Popular Science Studies A) Some ideas from the General discussion 199 B) A preliminary landscape of 20th century science periodicals 202 C) Notes on literature for some European regions 204 D) Selected literature 207 2 Introduction The most difficult terrain is probably that where we erroneously believe that we are on famili- ar ground. In the case of the interpolation, however, we tend to make between the mode of science popularization, that is so well-known to us historians of science for the 19th century, and the contemporary information or knowledge society this may turn out not to be accurate. Research in a new terrain thus needs to start with inspection. In this sense this collection of papers invites the reader to a tour that explores varied paths in the wide landscape of 20th cen- tury popular science. The preprint documents a symposium on "Communicating Science in 20th Century Europe: Comparative Perspectives" held on 28 July 2009 and organized by Leszek Zasztowt and myself. It was part of the 23rd International Congress of History of Science and Technology in Budapest that took place from 27 July to 2 August 2009. This symposium probably gathered for the first time a larger group of international scholars in order to deal with popular science and science communication in the 20th century. The idea to such a meeting goes back to discussions with Agustí Nieto-Galan at Oxford, when the sixth joint meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, and the History of Science Society considered in July 2008 the topic "Popularizing Science in 19th Century Europe: Comparative Perspectives" in a smaller session. Meanwhile in an ISIS focus section on "historicizing ‘popular science’" it was in particular Andreas Daum who pointed at three severe imbalances of the field, that might be stated in a very simplified manner as: too much science, too much English and too much 19th century.1 In a sense, this preprint is a response to exactly these problems (although the symposium planning predates the paper). As it turned out after a full day of presentations and discussions in Budapest, the topic of the 20th century was much too rich and multifaceted than to allow reaching a definite picture already after nine wonderful talks; but a discourse was established that is ongoing. The present collection of papers – some of them close to the original presentation, some of them already more expanded and elaborated – hence serves the purpose to document existing knowledge, scholarship, research perspectives and questions. The papers rather mark the beginning of an effort still to be made to integrate, compare and interpret the multiple roles of science in 20th century culture. For this reason we abstain from any global synthesis at this time as the right classification scheme – the equipment the traveler through the many commu- nicative spaces of science would need – is not yet available, but the topis is on the table. It were very fortunate circumstances allowing that besides the scholars planned to participate in the symposium further contributions could be added. While Agustí Nieto-Galan, James T. Andrews and Tibor Frank could not attend the symposium but kindly provided papers for this collection, also scholars who were not speakers of this particular symposium but had relevant 1 Andreas Daum: Varieties of Popular Science and the Transformations of Public Knowledge: Some Historical Reflections, Isis 100 (2009), 319-332, on 322. 3 Arne Schirrmacher talks in other sections, like Nestor Herran and María Boscá, joined our effort and provided additional pertinent contributions. The individual papers present, whenever possible, not only the historical analysis but also display quality and character of the sources they use, which turn out to be a wealth of material often hardly exploited. For this reason also a number of illustrations have been included and in addition available collections and databases are men- tioned. Clearly, these roughly 200 pages cannot be complete in any sense. Science in film and on TV is obviously one of the biggest white spots here, which can be only half-way justified with the growing attention it has received in recent times elsewhere.2 The preprint is organized as follows: The first section starts with the analysis of newspapers and at the very beginning of the 20th century. However, newspaper science is here not approached from the better known press of the strong science nations but rather from the periphery. Drawing on their insights that were gained from the STEP initiative (Science and Technology in the European Pheriphery)3 Papanelopoulou, Mergoupi-Savaidou and Tzorkas provide some methodological and historio- graphical reflections that are complemented with the analysis of a full newspaper issue after the event of Halley’s comet in May 1910. Simões, Carneiro and Diogo in turn compare three Portuguese newspapers and their coverage of earthquakes and volcanoes. Besides regional difference of interest, writing on science in the newspaper served both to affirm Portuguese science and scientists internationally as well as a means to translate political and cultural issues to a less problematic level. Switching to popular science journals, Nestor Herran studies in detail the representations of radium and radioactivity in the Spanish Ibérica, while Maria Bosca comments on the popular- ization of atomic and quantum physics in the same journal. While Herran carefully investi- gates also the Jesuit context of the journal and considers processes of appropriation of science, Boscá highlights physics content and journalistic forms of science communication in Ibérica. The second section about 20th century publishing and learning phenomena collects four papers on four countries and spans over the full 20th century. Agustí Nieto-Galan deals with the phenomenon, that scientific backwardness of peripheral Spain at the turn to the 20th cen- tury did not at all entail low activities in science popularization. Rather did the lack of clear boundaries between publications of popular volumes, educational writings and textbooks re- sult in a dynamic setting that allowed to mobilize popular science as means for institutionaliz- ation of professional science. Nieto-Galan exhibits various mechanisms for this kind of phe- nomenon by discussiong the cases of Darwinism, astronomy and thermodynamics and hence of three protagonists Odón de Buen, Josep Comas Sóla and José Echegaray. These examples 2 See e.g. Ramón Reichert: Im Kino der Humanwissenschaften. Studien zur Medialisierung wissenschaftlichen Wissens, Bielefeld 2007; Dorit Müller: Präsentationsformen von Wissen im Lehr- und Kulturfilm der Wei- marer Republik, Non Fiktion. Arsenal der anderen Gattungen 2 (2007), 34-46; Timothy Boon: Films of fact. A history of science in documentary films and television, London 2008; and related activities of the "History of Scientific Observation" group of the MPIWG dealing with film. 3 http://www.cc.uoa.gr/step/ 4 Introduction show at the same time how different bodies of popular knowledge were translated, both in terms of language and in terms of adaption to particular Spanish cultural conditions as, e.g., the strong role of the Church. In his brief account on the British developments Peter Bowler, who has just provided a com- prehensive account in his new book, points at an overlooked issue in the history of science popularization: the phenomenon of self-education through authoritative print material. This acquired great importance in the years before the Great War and even survived World War II. Here not journalists but scientists engaged in popular writing (also to improve their low aca- demic salaries), a finding that challenges accounts of a story of simple increase in profession- alization.