The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities-long an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists-is here examined as a practical problem for scientists. Construction of a boundary between science and varieties of non-science is useful for scientists' pursuit of professional goals: acquisition of intellectual authority and career opportunities; denial of these resources to "pseudoscientists"; and protection of the autonomy of scientific research from political interference. "Boundary-work" describes an ideological style found in scientists' attempts to create a public image for science (...) by contrasting it favorably to non-scientific intellectual or technical activities. Alternative sets of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied. However, selection of one or another description depends on which characteristics best achieve the demarcation in a way that justifies scientists' claims to authority or resources. Thus, "science" is no single thing: its boundaries are drawn and redrawn inflexible, historically changing and sometimes ambiguous ways. (shrink)

The visual culture of the sciences has become a focus for increasing attention in recent literature. This is partly a result of the concern with examining the material culture of the sciences that has developed over the last few decades. Increasing attention has also been devoted to understanding science as spectacle and to trying to understand the spaces where scientific performances, variously understood, take place. This essay surveys some aspects of the visual culture of the sciences in the long nineteenth (...) century. I examine the way visual scientific performances---such as magic lantern shows, optical illusions, and public experiments---were put together. I suggest in particular that if we want to understand the ways in which nineteenth‐century sciences appealed to their audiences we need to pay close attention to these kinds of performances, their performers, and the material and social resources that were deployed in their staging. (shrink)

The National Institute of Science and the Arts, founded in 1795, consists of parallel academies, concerned with science, literature, the visual arts and so on. In the nineteenth century it represented a unique government-sponsored intellectual authority and a supreme court judgement, a power which came to be resented by innovators of all kinds. The Académie des sciences held a virtual monopoly in representing French science but soon this came to be challenged. In the period of the Second Empire we find (...) a group of men carving out a new career for themselves as professional popularizers of science, commissioned to write regular articles in newspapers and journals. Although they had begun by simply reporting the meetings of the Académie des sciences, they soon widened their scope and even began criticizing the august Académie. Thus they represented the alternative voice of science, distinct from ‘official science’. These independent writers had their counterpart in painting and literature, both of which were developing radical new approaches in mid-century. When the very traditional Fine Art Academy refused to consider their paintings, painters like Cézanne and Manet found an alternative outlet. Writers too asserted their independence from the Académie française. There were not only many parallels between the independent practitioners in science, painting and literature but also new schools of ‘naturalism’ in painting and literature which looked to science as a model. (shrink)

The visual culture of the sciences has become a focus for increasing attention in recent literature. This is partly a result of the concern with examining the material culture of the sciences that has developed over the last few decades. Increasing attention has also been devoted to understanding science as spectacle and to trying to understand the spaces where scientific performances, variously understood, take place. This essay surveys some aspects of the visual culture of the sciences in the long nineteenth (...) century. I examine the way visual scientific performances—such as magic lantern shows, optical illusions, and public experiments—were put together. I suggest in particular that if we want to understand the ways in which nineteenth‐century sciences appealed to their audiences we need to pay close attention to these kinds of performances, their performers, and the material and social resources that were deployed in their staging. (shrink)