THE BOOKS

Troy Sadler, Section Editor

Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,by Peter J. Bowler. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA, 2009. xi + 339pp. ISBN 978-0-226-06863-3.

The periodic release of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study(TIMSS) report provides a regular opportunity for science educators and scientists aliketo bemoan the sorry state of Americans’ basic knowledge of science. Americans, weare reminded, do not understand science and lag behind citizens of other industrializedcountries. We hear the familiar calls for the United States to improve science education inorder for the country to remain competitive in an increasingly global economy. Improvingscience education for all, the argument goes, promises economic stability.

Science educators have traditionally responded to these calls by suggesting reforms inthe formal educational system. Yet, by focusing on school science, educators have tendedto overlook other popular spaces where the public encounters science as often, if not moreoften: in books, in magazines, on television, and in other forms of popular media. In today’ssocially and technologically networked and complex world, learning about science throughsuch informal resources promises to increase in relevance. One need only look at the recentNational Research Council (2009) report Learning Science in Informal Environments tosee the increasing recognition of these spaces.

Such informal spaces for learning about science, however, are not new. In his latestbook, Peter J. Bowler narrates the rich and complex history of popular science in a timemuch like ours of today: early 20th-century Britain. His work not only stands on its own asan excellent piece of historical scholarship, highly engaging and meticulously researched,but also promises to enrich science educators’ understanding of how the public comes tounderstand, interact, and learn about science as well as the ways in which economic, social,and national factors influence the production of this material. The book is especially timely,as today’s economic and social circumstances in many ways parallel those from a centuryago: reduced costs of media production, increasing specialization of scientific knowledge,profusion of everyday technologies, and further networking of the global market. Thereseems to be a similar urgency now, as there was then, for increasing scientific understandingamong the public.

Bowler’s book surveys science books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers written forthe general public from the late 1890s through World War II. These media, each intendedfor a different audience, served a variety of political, pedagogical, and financial purposes.Bowler weaves, to a varying degree of success, each strand into his story. Most impressiveabout the book is the vast trove of media collected and the biographical register compiled atthe end of the book. Unable to find many popular sources in libraries, Bowler has collecteda myriad of pamphlets and self-help books, has sifted through daily newspapers and weeklymagazines, and has even included some relevant archival material in order to point to theshifting ways in which publishers, scientists, and journalists negotiated with each other in

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presenting science to the public. The massive collection highlights how the idea of a single“public” is problematic, and how different authors, publishers, and audiences each heldtheir own goals and aspirations.

Bowler begins by positioning his work within a rich literature, including Bernard Light-man’s (2007) book, Victorian Popularizers of Science, which examines popular science inVictorian Britain, and LaFollette’s (1990) Making Science Our Own, a study similar to hisown but set in the American context. By examining the popularization of science in Britainduring the first half of the 20th century, Bowler has not only filled in a geographic andtemporal gap in the research literature but, more important, also challenged the myth of the“isolated scientist” as “a myth that obscures the true level of involvement by professionalscientists in the effort to promote public interest in science” (p. 7). He carefully leads usthrough several decades of publication that show just the opposite: Scientists remainedactively engaged in the production of a highly specialized body of self-help literature aswell as nonspecialized publications such as newspapers, magazines, and even radio. Bowlerhighlights the tensions that arose between scientists and a newly emerging group of sciencejournalists and brings into focus the active role of publishing companies and editors in thecreation of such books, pamphlets, and magazines.

Throughout the book, the reader meets many colorful characters, some eager to furthertheir careers, others looking to line their pockets. For example, there is “Professor” A.M. Low, an inventor, popular science writer, and founder of Armchair Science in 1929,who comes across as an opportunist. Low rubbed real professors and scientists the wrongway, representing “exactly the kind of individualistic, tinkering practical expertise that theprofessionals hoped to transcend in their bid for influence with government and indus-try. Low’s vision of a popular science magazine would inevitably leave out most of thescientists” (p. 177). We sense that not all involved in popularizing science held Low’sopportunitistic approach. In fact, for every Low, Bowler introduces a practicing scientisteager to write a self-help book or an encyclopedia entry. Julian Huxley serves as, perhaps,the most extreme example. Huxley, a prolific and well-respected scientist (even becominga Fellow of the Royal Society), eventually abandoned his scientific career to pursue sciencewriting full-time.

Bowler acknowledges Huxley to be an exception to the rule. For most professionalscientists, writing for a popular audience, although not frowned upon, remained in tensionwith their research program and the expectations of their colleagues. Such writing alsoproved tricky and difficult for scientists accustomed to writing in technical and specializedjournals. Some scientists, such as J. B. S. Haldane, wore their political affiliations on theirsleeves. Haldane, like many scientists of the time, provided a social analysis and critiqueof science and technology from the political left. He lambasted the misappropriation ofscience and criticized the popular media’s tendency to sensationalize the work of scientists.

Three additional groups play a central role in Bowler’s story: professional science jour-nalists, publishers, and the public. Bowler does a nice job of incorporating their interests intothis story. For example, science correspondents, a new breed of journalists in 20th-centuryBritain, were few and far between. Unlike scientists, whose work was commissioned weeksif not months in advance, correspondents filled a niche for newspapers looking for a writerwho could turn a story around in days and could write material for a wide and generalaudience often unfamiliar with specialized scientific knowledge.

Publishers of more specialized books and magazines, on the other hand, positioned theirworks to sell to a narrower segment of society. These publications varied widely: Somepublishers cast a wide net, hoping to attract a wide but educated audience, one more limitedthan the newspapers. Yet others focused on even smaller and more specialized groups ofreaders. For Bowler, the cost of these books serves as a proxy for determining how wide

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a net the publishers cast and who their intended audience was. Finally, Bowler sketchesfor us the audience of these materials. He portrays the public as a set of groups, each withtheir own interests and needs, yet at the same time draws some generalizations about them.This public, Bowler asserts, is interested in self-help and self-education literature duringa period of time with growing economic and educational opportunities in secondary andpostsecondary schooling.

Bowler deftly weaves these narratives together and what emerges is a process throughwhich the presentation of science to the public is neither straightforward nor linear. Instead,it is complex, shaped by financial constraints and aspirations, differing notions of scienceand its role in society, and rival egos and goals. One of the most important lessons fromthis book is Bowler’s assertion that the public shaped the final product, that through theirinterests in the free marketplace, scientists and publishers created specific products thatwould sell. It is at this very point, however, that Bowler’s book is weakest. For all ofBowler’s careful parsing of the types of popular works and his brief allusions to thesocioeconomic status of different groups, we lack a sophisticated sense of “the public”and the range of their interests and activities. As Bowler notes, the public is purchasingand reading nonscientific literature as well as scientific literature. What draws some toscientific material over nonscientific material? How might different constituents of thepublic be reading science and interacting with it? Granted, such questions are difficult totackle. But an analysis of letters to authors, to publishing companies, and to newspapers,material that Bowler cites sporadically, may provide additional clues into uncovering howthe public came to read, interact, and understand science.

Overall, this book has much to offer anyone grappling with the perceived chasm thatexists between the public understanding of science and professional scientific knowledge.Throughout, Bowler challenges his readers to recalibrate their understanding of how popularscience comes to be produced. He shows the ways in which multiple interest groups operatedwithin a complex network to produce an impressive amount of media. Although we todayas science educators may bemoan the failure of the public to understand science, we wouldbe well-served to use his incisive historical analysis to begin to untangle the overlappingand intersecting ways in which science moves from the world of scientists into the publicsphere.

REFERENCES

LaFollette, M. C. (1990). Making science our own: Public images of science, 1910 – 1955. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.

Lightman, B. (2007). Victorian popularizers of science: Designing nature for new audiences. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.

National Research Council. (2009). Learning science in informal environments: People, places, and pursuits.Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

DAVID MESHOULAMDepartment of Curriculum and Instruction225 N. Mills StreetUniversity of Wisconsin–MadisonMadison, WI 53706, USA

DOI 10.1002/sce.20419Published online 20 September 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

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