What big questions and large‐scale narratives give coherence to the history of science? From the late 1970s onward, the field has been transformed through a stress on practice and fresh perspectives from gender studies, the sociology of knowledge, and work on a greatly expanded range of practitioners and cultures. Yet these developments, although long overdue and clearly beneficial, have been accompanied by fragmentation and loss of direction. This essay suggests that the narrative frameworks used by historians of science need to (...) come to terms with diversity by understanding science as a form of communication. The centrality of processes of movement, translation, and transmission is already emerging in studies of topics ranging from ethnographic encounters to the history of reading. Not only does this approach offer opportunities for crossing boundaries of nation, period, and discipline that are all too easily taken for granted; it also has the potential for creating a more effective dialogue with other historians and the wider public. (shrink)

The Bridgewater Treatises were among the most widely circulated books of science in early nineteenth-century Britain, yet little is known of their contemporary readership. Drawing on the new history of the book, this essay examines the .. "communication circuit" in which the series was produced and read, exploring some of the processes that shaped the meanings the books possessed for their original readers. In so doing, it seeks to go beyond the standard interpretation of the Bridgewater Treatises as contributing to (...) a "common context" for debate among the social and cultural elite. Instead, the essay demonstrates the wide circulation of the series among many classes of readers and shows that consideration of the distinctive meanings with which the books were invested by readers in divergent cultural groups serves to elucidate the contested meaning of science in the period. It is argued that by thus taking seriously the agency of all those involved in the communication circuit, including readers as well as authors and publishers, this approach supersedes the increasingly unworkable analytical category of "popular science.". (shrink)

What big questions and large‐scale narratives give coherence to the history of science? From the late 1970s onward, the field has been transformed through a stress on practice and fresh perspectives from gender studies, the sociology of knowledge, and work on a greatly expanded range of practitioners and cultures. Yet these developments, although long overdue and clearly beneficial, have been accompanied by fragmentation and loss of direction. This essay suggests that the narrative frameworks used by historians of science need to (...) come to terms with diversity by understanding science as a form of communication. The centrality of processes of movement, translation, and transmission is already emerging in studies of topics ranging from ethnographic encounters to the history of reading. Not only does this approach offer opportunities for crossing boundaries of nation, period, and discipline that are all too easily taken for granted; it also has the potential for creating a more effective dialogue with other historians and the wider public. (shrink)