Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
the public (Mulder 1881, vol. 1, p. 182, 257-9;
cf.
Homburg 1993a, pp.
287-373). A new generation of chemists opted to give low priority to
educating the people and put their knowledge in the service of science
itself, the government, and the victors of the liberal revolution of 1848,
the industrialists (Homburg 1993c, pp. 266-70; Verbong & Homburg
1994).
This is why Mulder, regardless of his major role in the establishment
of Dutch education in chemistry, cannot be characterized as an early pro-
fessional chemist. He belonged to an earlier phase of the cultivation of
science. His entire life he remained faithful to views articulated around
1830 within organizations such as the Society for the Common Good and
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge - views he first em-
braced during and right after his college years (
cf.
Homburg 1987; Hom-
burg 1993a, pp. 223-51, 313-28, 341-50).
10. Wonders of Technology
These new views, such as Gunning's, had obvious consequences for the
popularization of science. After all, the old justification of spreading
social virtues through knowledge of nature was no longer accepted. By
1855 Kruseman, who in Haarlem had intensive contact with Busken
Huet, became painfully aware of this. Consequently, he altered the sub-
title of
Familie-magazijn
from 'reading-matter for entertainment and the
diffusion of useful skills' to 'moral reading-matter for entertainment and
also for the diffusion of useful skills'. A subtle change that was meant to
express that the moral and the scientific were separate worlds (Enschedé
1898, vol. 1, pp. 320-6). Some time thereafter he gave up nearly all his
popular science activities.
In the vacuum that emerged in the area of popularization on account
of the rise of regular chemical education and the more limited appeal of
the useful knowledge diffusion movement only a small niche remained
for the popular chemistry book: showing the wonders of technology.
Whereas astronomers, paleontologists, biologists, and other earth scien-
tists in popular, lavishly illustrated works managed to entertain the public
at large with the results of their science, the chemist's test-tubes proved
to be no attention-grabbers. More promising were spectacular, or myste-
