This paper argues that that political context of British science popularization in the inter-war period was intimately tied to contemporary debates about religion and science. A leading science popularizer, the Quaker astronomer A.S. Eddington, and one of his opponents, the materialist Chapman Cohen, are examined in detail to show the intertwined nature of science, philosophy, religion, and politics.

Summary During the 1930 and 1940s, the small world of cosmologists was buzzing with philosophical and methodological questions. The debate was stirred by Edward Milne's cosmological model, which was deduced from general principles that had no link with observation. Milne's approach was to have an important impact on the development of modern cosmology. But this article shows that it is an exaggeration to intimate, as some authors have done recently, that Milne's rationalism went on to infiltrate the discipline.

In Plutarch’s Quæstiones Conviviales there is a discussion on the topic—π.