Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
delineated social group. They were part of a single learned and literate
social elite within which new knowledge and insights involving nature
circulated freely, even though on an individual level there were substan-
tial differences in understanding, of course. In these societies, interested
amateurs might have been at once 'consumers' of scientific knowledge
and 'producers' of new facts and phenomena (
cf.
Golinski 1992). Popu-
larization in the eighteenth-century sense, then, should not be merely
conceived as the diffusion of knowledge within well-to-do male patrician
circles, but primarily as the transfer of knowledge to social groups that
because of their gender, age, or class did not belong to those circles:
women, children and the common people.
From the mid-eighteenth century onward, it was far from unusual for
upper class women to display a warm interest in the latest accomplish-
ments of natural philosophy. They joined their husbands in society lec-
tures, discussed natural science topics in salons, embraced Martinet's
Catechism of Nature
, and in 1785 established their own Natural Science
Ladies Society (Natuurkundig Gezelschap der Dames) in Middelburg
(Sturkenboom 2004). Topics like Francesco Algarotti's
Il Newtonianismo
per le Dame
(1737) and works by the abbot Nollet (1743) and Émilie du
Châtelet (1738) were in high demand.
4
After about 1770, influenced by Enlightenment pedagogues such as
J.C. Rousseau, J.B. Basedow, C.G. Salzmann, and, later, J.H. Pestalozzi,
children's education and the training and civilizing of the 'lesser classes'
gained significant attention. This led to plans for education reforms and
the start of courses for craftsmen and manufacturers, whereby the diffu-
sion of knowledge of nature was one of the objectives pursued.
5
Marti-
net's 1779
Catechism of nature for the use of children
offers a good ex-
ample of this new phase in science popularization;
a fortiori
this also
counts for the establishment, five years later, of the Maatschappij tot Nut
4
Marie Meurdrac's
Chymie charitable et facile en faveur des dames
from 1666 does
not belong in this list, because it was not related to the socio-cultural movement from
which the works of Algarotti and Du Châtelet emerged. It was a very practical book
with home recipes (Raichvarg & Jacques 1991, pp. 31-4, 55-7; Van Berkel 1985, pp.
82, 87; Paasman 1971, pp. 41-2).
5
In France things occurred somewhat earlier. Pluche's
Le spectacle de la nature
(1732) was already specifically written for children (Homburg 1993a, pp. 100-13;
Lenders 1988, pp. 21, 32-6, 132-48; Raichvarg & Jacques 1991, pp. 34-40).
