Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment

[Dave Monroe]

Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment
Edited by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Université Paris X, France and
Christine Blondel, CNRS, France
Series : Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945

Imprint: Ashgate
Illustrations: Includes 20 b&w illustrations
Published: July 2008
Format: 234 x 156 mm
Extent: 176 pages
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978-0-7546-6370-6
Price : £55.00 » Online: £49.50
BL Reference: 306.4'5'094
LoC Control No: 2007038995


Air-pumps, electrical machines, colliding ivory balls, coloured
sparks, mechanical planetariums, magic mirrors, hot-air balloons -
these are just a sample of the devices displayed in public
demonstrations of science in the eighteenth century. Public and
private demonstrations of natural philosophy in Europe then differed
vastly from today's unadorned and anonymous laboratory experiments.
Science was cultivated for a variety of purposes in many different
places; scientific instruments were built and used for investigative
and didactic experiments as well as for entertainment and popular
shows. Between the culture of curiosities which characterized the
seventeenth century and the distinction between academic and popular
science that gradually emerged in the nineteenth, the eighteenth
century was a period when scientific activities took place in a
variety of sites, ranging from academies, and learned societies to
salons and popular fairs, shops and streets.

This collection of case studies describing public demonstrations in
Britain, Germany, Italy and France exemplifies the wide variety of
settings for scientific activities in the European Enlightenment.
Filled with sparks and smells, the essays raise broader issues about
the ways in which modern science established its legitimacy and social
acceptability. They point to two major features of the cultures of
science in the eighteenth-century: entertainment and utility.
Experimental demonstrations were attended by apothecaries and
craftsmen for vocational purposes. At the same time, they had to fit
in with the taste of both polite society and market culture. Public
demonstrations were a favourite entertainment for ladies and gentlemen
and a profitable activity for instrument makers and booksellers.

Contents: Introduction: a science full of shocks, sparks and smells,
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Christine Blondel; The laboratory, the
workshop, and the theatre of experiment, Larry Stewart; Technology,
curiosity and utility in France and England in the 18th century,
Liliane Pérez; Amusing physics, Jessica Riskin; Experimental physics
in Enlightenment Paris: the practice of popularization in urban
culture, Michael R. Lynn; Domestic spectacles: electrical instruments
between business and conversation, Paola Bertucci; The sale of shocks
and sparks: itinerant electricians in German Enlightenment, Oliver
Hochadel; Between commerce and philanthropy: chemistry courses in
18th-century Paris, Christine Lehman; Joseph Priestley and the
chemical sublime in British public science, Jan Golinski; Chemistry on
stage: G.F. Rouelle and the theatricality of 18th-century chemistry,
Lissa Roberts; Honoré Fragonard, anatomical virtuoso, Jonathan Simon;
Index.

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=10308&edition_id=11003&history=default.aspx%3fpage%3d2363

Contents

http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Science_and_Spectacle_in_the_European_Enlightenment_Cont.pdf

Introduction

http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Science_and_Spectacle_in_the_European_Enlightenment_Intro.pdf

Index

http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Science_and_Spectacle_in_the_European_Enlightenment_Index.pdf