The Victorian Age was unquestionably the great age of physical science.
It was not only the number and quality of the scientific men whose
working lives were covered by this period that were responsible for
this--although no period in history makes a braver show--but it was
due also to the fact that the scientific discoveries of that age were
often of the kind that rouses a vast amount of public attention. The
attention of a cultured minority was no new thing in the history
of science. Newton’s discoveries, largely through the influence of
his indefatigable populariser Voltaire, speedily became, in a more
or less adequate form, the common property of the cultured part of
Europe. But from the time of Newton to that of Davy there was no such
general attention paid to science; England and the Continent largely
lost touch, even technical students working in comparative isolation,
so that the great French advances in Newtonian philosophy were not
appreciated for several years in England, and the cultured public in
England itself no longer considered the intelligent observation of
scientific progress to be one of its chief duties. It never did regain
this outlook; science, becoming increasingly technical, became more and
more completely the affair of a small and specialised class, until, by
the middle of the nineteenth century, it was the most dissociated of
intellectual activities. The great recrudescence of general interest
in science was brought about by the discovery that this dissociation
was merely a consequence of lack of attention, and that, in fact,
scientific discovery was not unconnected with the major interests of
mankind.
The publication in 1859 of Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ persuaded
the men of that time, rightly or wrongly, that science and religion
were very intimately connected, and science, at one blow, obtained
a degree of public attention without precedent in its history. The
interest thus evoked was not always very intelligent, but it was
intense and widely diffused; it extended to other branches of science,
influenced the educational system of the country and gave rise to an
enormous extension of “popular” science lectures and articles. This
popular interest was of a different kind from the leisurely interest
previously shown by the cultured classes. The latter was, indeed, much
more genuinely an interest in science for its own sake; the former
had a different emotional basis and was merely the diversion of an
interest in religious or social questions. There is a controversial
air about nearly all the popular scientific writings of that time; the
scientific man, like his audience, was fully aware that he was talking
about a good deal more than the ostensible subject of discussion.
Science, the creature of the least popular of man’s activities,
patient and unprejudiced ratiocination, became associated with violent
emotions. With Biology and Geology this association was inevitable and
immediate; their subject-matter happened to be that of the first few
chapters of Genesis. But the more exact sciences, when public attention
turned their way, could offer no such excitements. They seem to have
compromised by specialising on “marvels.” The “Marvels of Science”
became a familiar heading, and the unsophisticated public were stunned
by figures: the distances of the stars, the number of molecules in
a cubic centimetre of water, the weight, in tons, of the earth, the
incredible minuteness of light-waves, and so on, the whole object of
such discourses being, as Maxwell unkindly put it, to prevent the
audience realising that intellectual exhaustion had set in until the
hour had elapsed.
We readily admit that popular science of a very different kind was
also provided. Faraday, Kelvin, Huxley, Tyndall, Maxwell himself, did
their best to make the lay public acquainted with scientific methods
as well as results, to present their results as part of a coherent
theory instead of as items in catalogue of marvels. But it is the
marvel-mongers who have proved most tenacious of life, so that
“popular” science has now become a term of contempt, and any statement
whatever, provided it has the right marvellous flavour, may be printed
in our newspapers as scientific information. In America such marvellous
statements, not only inaccurate but meaningless, occupy pages of the
Sunday supplements, so that that meritorious organ, _The Scientific
American_, has to announce, in self-defence, that it publishes, not
“popular” science, but merely non-technical science. In our own country
that sober periodical _Nature_ used to print extracts from the
more marvellous scientific items provided by the daily press, thus
furnishing a little light relief from its own austere pages. The fact
that this quackery exists is not unimportant. If it does no more, it
often leads to a waste of time, for there has been more than one worthy
gentleman who has imagined himself to be attacking the pernicious
doctrines of science, when, as his argument makes clear, it is this
kind of quackery he has in mind. The cure for this kind of thing would
seem to be the development of a conscience in newspaper editors, unless
we prefer to wait patiently until a tincture of science forms part of
the education of an English adult.
But, turning to the popular but accurate scientific article, we may ask
what purpose it serves. Should its object be to supply the deficiencies
of a defective general education, to provide an easy introduction
to science? Doubtless such articles or lectures have served such a
purpose; Faraday himself, as we know, was won over to science by the
blandishments of Mrs. Somerville, and there is more than one case where
the current of a man’s life has been definitely changed by a lantern
lecture. It is, nevertheless, a mistake to suppose that the attentive
perusal of a number of popular science articles is equivalent to a
scientific education, a mistake which is unfortunately very common. The
fact is that the scientific treatise and the popular science article,
so far from being rivals, serve entirely different ends, and may be
read with profit by the same man. Broadly speaking, the function of
the popular science article is to present science in its humanistic
aspect. It should, while dealing with as definite a scientific problem
as the author chooses, hint at the relations between this problem and
the other interests of mankind. Very often these relations are implicit
in the subject; such subjects are, in fact, usually chosen, and for
that reason. But there is another type of article which has for its
object the exposition of relations which are not obvious, and this
exposition may be the result of a genuine and valuable intellectual
effort on the part of the writer. Such articles are really essays in
criticism and are not essentially different from the best type of
literary criticism. Some of the best articles of this kind--some of
those by W. K. Clifford, for example--are as truly “research” work as
is the technical paper. A third type of article may, either by way
of history or by way of logic, show the position occupied by a given
theory or fact in a scheme of knowledge. This type is usually of more
interest to the scientific student than to the general reader, since a
general acquaintance with the whole subject is presupposed, and in this
connection it is interesting to note that a powerful plea has recently
been made for the more effective endowment of the teaching of the
history of science.
If a popular science article serves none of these three purposes,
it must inevitably be nothing but the description of a “marvel.” In
competent hands this may be agreeable enough; the appetite for marvels
is vigorous and universal, and its indulgence cannot be condemned as a
vice. To look at a marvel for the pleasure of gaping is not, however,
a very intelligent occupation, and, to judge from the number and kind
of phenomena unhesitatingly ascribed to “the electricity in the air,”
merely increases credulity. Regarded as a marvel, wireless telegraphy
is, of course, merely a miracle, a fact extensively exploited by
spiritualists. The human tendency to seize on the merely marvellous
should, in fact, be carefully allowed for by the writer of popular
science articles; he should, if anything, be even more reserved and
pedantically precise than when addressing a scientific audience; an
incautiously flamboyant remark is very likely to be seized upon to
support some preposterous philosophy or religion. Usually, however,
the popular science writer yields to the temptation, to _épater_
his audience, to make himself more readable, as readability is now
understood, and so he may, while speaking the truth, have all the
effect of telling a lie.
Thus the division between the genuine and the quack science article is
not, in practice, clearly defined. The difference between the writers
is definite enough; but it is writer and public together which make the
popular science article. Lack of education is just as great a hindrance
to perception as is lack of sensitiveness. The poet may be subtly and
completely misunderstood because his audience lacks sensitiveness,
and, to compare small things with great, the conscientious retailer of
scientific information may be in a like case for a different reason.
So that if it is true that the best type of poetry is that written
by the poet “for himself,” it is perhaps true that the best type of
popular science article is written for a similar reason--because the
writer is genuinely interested in working out certain speculations or
treating certain facts in a certain way. Some of the very best popular
articles--those by Helmholtz, for example--are of this kind, and have
achieved a relative immortality, although, like the poetry which is
read chiefly by poets, they are probably read chiefly by scientific
men.