Summary Five recently discovered letters written by James Ferguson, FRS (1710?1776) while he was on a lecture tour in 1771 add substantially to what was previously known about his activities at that time. Together with newspaper advertisements and other correspondence, they not only enable his itinerary to be reconstructed in also reveal some of his own thoughts at the time and the difficulties that he had to contend with. On this particular tour, Ferguson was away from his London base for (...) at least seven months, visiting Birmingham, Kidderminster, Worcester, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Cheadle (Staffs.), and Derby. During this period he delivered his course of 12 lectures on Experimental Philosophy at least eight times. Amongst the people that he met were Matthew Boulton, Josiah Wedgwood, and John Whitehurst, as well as the recipient of the letters, James Beresford of Bewdley, Worcestershire. In this paper the opportunity has been taken to present also an outline of the gradual evolution of Ferguson's lecturing career, leading up to his situation in the 1770s, as much of the relevant source material now available was unknown to his nineteenth-century biographer, Ebenezer Henderson. (shrink)

A study of some London newspapers of the early 1770s has shown that Martin and Ferguson gave continuous courses of evening lectures during the winter, in direct competition with each other. In this paper the coverage of their courses is derived from their advertisements, and related to their publications and other activities. In some subjects, such as Electricity, Hydrostatics, and Air-pump Experiments, there was close correspondence between the courses, but others reflected the lecturers' primary interests: for Martin, Optics, and for (...) Ferguson, Mechanics and Astronomy. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper argues that the New Science, which was seen as essentially a public enterprise, was moreover a major constituent of the public sphere in early modern era. In seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Western Europe the sphere of public experimentation, testing, and discussion related to the new science, manifested, itself as a highly diversified, contested, and complex social field.Two general problems arose in constructing this cultural public sphere: the selection of participants in the debate and the inclusion of a heterogenous public (...) in the experimental scene. National authorities employed diverse policies but none denied the necessity of public debate for testing the validity of experimentations. The public sphere had to create its own conditions of existence by imposing manifold regulations in order to make these public meetings possible and enjoyable. These regulations emphasized common interest and the moral code as the most basic condition for rhe sustenance of the public sphere, thus enhancing self-restraint, tolerance, and politeness on the part of both discussants and participants. The more inclusive and heterogenous the public sphere, the more these norms were required. Thus the sphere of public debate constituted by early modern science implied a civilizing process, quite different from and more encompassing than the one analyzed by Norbert Elias. (shrink)

Popular science in Nuremberg at the end of the 18th century exemplifies a little known German scientific culture: as in English und French towns, public lectures in natural philosophy and experimental demonstrations were offered to an interested bourgeois audience; the production of scientific toys flourished. The career of Johann Konrad Gütle, private teacher, itinerant lecturer and instrument maker, illustrates the popular scientific scene in Enlightenment Nuremberg.

Over the last forty years several historians have drawn attention to aspects of the activities of lecturers on natural philosophy in Britain in the eighteenth century. Hans and others looked at the part these lecturers played in the development of education, particularly adult education. Musson and Robinson considered the possible connection between the work of the lecturers and the growth of industry, and Inkster and others have explored the relationship between lecturers and the institutions set up to support science, especially (...) around 1800.4 More recently, Schaffer has pointed to the parallels between the performances of the lecturers on natural philosophy and other contemporary cultural activities. As a consequence of these studies we know much more about the work of the lecturers, its significance, and, to a lesser extent, their relationship to their audience. (shrink)

Some of these women went on to champion the new science and played a significant role in securing its acceptance by polite society.