ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Public Science Lecturing in Britain (1700-1820)

• In Event: A New Kind of Amusement for Cultivating the Mind: Science Popularisation in Britain and Italy in the Long Eighteenth Century

English Abstract

The popularisation of science through public lecturing was a prominent and widespread phenomenon in eighteenth-century Britain. Historians have studied the subject mainly through traditional approaches that make only limited use of quantitative methods. Yet, a quantitative approach is ideally suited for examining how public lecturing evolved on a national scale over a long period from out of a multitude of independent, but closely interconnected, activities.
In this paper, I will present the first results of a series of pilot studies that will utilise quantitative methods to examine public science lecturing in eighteenth-century Britain. I look at data from adverts placed by lecturers in newspapers and magazines between 1700-1820, with a view to finding trends relating to: the geographical and temporal distribution of lecturing; the profiles of lecturers; the methods of delivery and lecture contents; the popularity of subjects; the make-up of audiences etc. In this short paper, I will use examples from Scotland but will discuss more broadly the role public lecturing played in the history of eighteenth-century science education and the ways in which it facilitated interaction between science, philosophy, religion, and industry.

Author

• Plamena Panayotova, University of Glasgow