Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
shared the public space with wine merchants and fruit sellers. The very
idea that there is a 'public' comes to us because the agora, or its various
equivalents throughout history, existed as meeting place that was not pri-
vate space. Although natural philosophy and later science has always had
a level of public presence, whether it was Socrates in the actual agora or
Benjamin Franklin at fashionable French salons (
e.g
. Tucker 2003,
Isaacson 2004), the practice of modern science does not lend itself well
to the culture of the agora. As science became dominated by experiment,
the locus of investigation became increasingly private. For Robert Boyle
and his assistant Robert Hooke, the gentlemanly enterprise of experimen-
tation took place in a laboratory that was part of a private residence
(Shapin & Schaffer 1985). Admission was by personal invitation or re-
ferral by a close associate. Even the 'public' demonstrations of the Royal
Society were largely restricted to members. By the twentieth century, the
physical place of scientific activity was not just private, but often care-
fully separated from other activities and hidden behind locked doors. The
private world of science was partly a matter of utility, since scientists had
to contend with safety issues, such as the control of toxic chemicals, and
to protect sensitive and expensive equipment. Equally, science became
increasingly private as more scientists began to work on secret military
projects.
While the necessity for such security was perfectly reasonable, it was
nonetheless the case that the practice of science took place far from the
public gaze. The potential problems of the isolation of science was part
of the motivation to create the British Association for the Advancement
of Science in 1831 and the American Association for the Advancement
of Science (AAAS) in 1848.
9
These two organizations have expended a
great deal of effort to keep science in the public forum. To reach a wider
audience, the AAAS began publishing the journal
Science
(partly fi-
nanced by Thomas Alva Edison) in 1880. It joined the magazine
Scien-
tific American
, which had first appeared in 1845, as conduits between the
scientific community and the American public. Another important venue
9
See MacLeod & Collins 1981 and www.the-ba.net; for the AAAS, see Kohlstedt
1999 and www.aaas.org.
