Media Science before the Great War

192 Pages·1996·25.483 MB·English

by  Peter Broks (auth.)

MEDIA SCIENCE BEFORE THE GREAT WAR
Media Science
before the Great War
Peter Broks
Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies
University of the West of England
Bristol
First published in Great Britain 1996 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-25045-5 ISBN 978-1-349-25043-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-25043-1
First published in the United States of America 1996 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-16019-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Broks, Peter.
Media science before the Great War / Peter Broks.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-16019-7
I. Science-Popular works. 2. Science news. I. Title.
Q162.B838 1996
070.4'495'09043-dc20 96-7159
CIP
© Peter Broks 1996
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1996 978-0-333-65638-9
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London Wl P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
For my parents
Contents
Preface viii
Introduction ix
Popular Culture
2 Popular Press 14
3 The Popularisation of Science 28
4 Images 41
5 Science and Religion 53
6 Nature 66
7 Evolution 83
8 Progress 98
9 New Mentalities III
Conclusion 128
Notes 134
Bibliography 163
Index 176
vii
Preface
The idea for this book never occurred to me. The work seemed a natural
progression and coming together of diverse interests - history, the media,
popular science. It occupied an academic space that was, like the maga
zines themselves, untouched and unexplored. Collecting dust even in the
best of libraries and antiquarian shops, bound volumes of magazines still
wait the researcher's knife to separate the uncut pages. When we do open
them out, we have spread before us the Victorian and Edwardian world.
Not a true picture, for nowadays we are too astute to see the media as a
window on the world, but at least we have the smell of the times.
I have never liked long lists of acknowledgements. The sincerity seems
to diminish with each line of gratitude. I hope my brevity is taken as a sign
of true appreciation. First mention must go to John Brooke at the
University of Lancaster, whose' phone call prompted a career change from
journalism into academic research and whose supervision was as consider
ate and rigorous as any student could wish to have. The research was
funded by the Science and Engineering Research Council, and the book
was written during a period of teaching relief provided by the Faculty of
Humanities at the University of the West of England, Bristol. However,
for a book that is so concerned with the everyday, it is only right that my
principal thanks go to those who made the day-to-day writing of it possi
ble: Doreen and Mal, for the support that only parents can give; Kim, for
many small kindnesses; and I1izane for her patience.
Publishing details of illustrations are included in their captions (see
pp. 96, 118, 120-1 and 122).
viii
Introduction
In 1902 a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society told readers of
Pearson's Magazine about the Tehuelche, a nomadic tribe of Patagonian
Indians. Early the previous year he had travelled south from Buenos Aires
and had struck the Indian trail that led north from Punta Arenas. The trail
ran along under the Cordillera, and for countless generations the tribe had
wandered up and down its length following the herds of guanaco, a rela
tive of the llama and the principal quarry of the Tehuelche. These ancient
wanderings were now under threat. The article reported a remark from one
of the tribe. "'Once," he said, "we had the sea upon the one side of us, and
upon the other the Cordillera. But it is not so now; the white man is now
ever advancing upon one side and the Cordillera ever unchanging upon the
other. And once all the land was ours.'" Readers were introduced to the
contented lives of the Tehuelche, their customs, religion, ways of hunting,
clothes and food. They read of their 'many admirable traits of character'
and of how, physically, they were 'one of the finest races in the world',
but
Progress, the white man's shibboleth, has no meaning for the
Tehuelche. He is losing ground day by day in the wild onrush of
mankind. Our thoughts do not appeal to him. He has neither part nor lot
in the feverish desires and ambitions that move us so strongly .... To
see a race, so kindly, picturesque, and gifted with fine qualities of body
and mind, absolutely at handgrips with extinction seems to me one of
the saddest results of the growing domination of the white man and his
methods of civilisation. I
What are we to make of this? At first glance it is not unlike the global
awareness and ethnosensitivity we are accustomed to seeing in television
documentaries - the peaceful indigenous population, a vital part of their
own environment, forced to come to terms with an alien way of life.
Details suggest its age. Terms like 'race' and 'Indians' would only be used
in the most circumspect ways today, if at all. Elsewhere in the article we
read of how the Tehuelche, 'like other far less intelligent races of
uncivilised people', appear to be incapable of much forethought. However,
'in appearance they are splendid fellows', who were 'well built and devel
oped'. Most of them averaged six feet tall or more, and 'their manner of
life tends to muscular excellence'. There is clearly something of the 'noble
savage' about this vision with its emphasis on height, muscularity and a
IX
x Introduction
carefree Iive-for-the-present mentality. We could explore further and
examine how 'subject races' were represented in the British media or how
the idea of 'Progress' was popularised. We could pick up on these ideas to
look at concepts such as 'civilised', 'savage' or 'natural' and see what
they tell us about related issues like science, technology and evolution.
We could then trace these themes through a wide range of literature and
into the more general culture of late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain.
But there are puzzles here too. What is an attack on the civilising
process doing in an imperialist magazine like Pearson's? Only three years
earlier another Pearson's publication was quite happy to argue that
progress only came from the strong conquering the weak and that without
an aggressive Anglo-Saxon race the world would' lapse into barbarism.
Why the difference? Is it because of the different publications or the dif
ferent times? How do we reconcile divergent views from a single publish
ing company, or from a single periodical, or indeed from a single issue of
a magazine?
The purpose of this book is to understand articles such as this, the mag
azines in which they appeared and the culture in which they were read. Its
principal focus is science (including technology and medicine), yet it con
cerns people who in all probability were neither scientifically literate nor
even scientifically interested. One could call it the zero-option, but it does
propose an alternative to the traditional perspective on popular science -
to look for science in what was popular rather than popularity in what was
science. A truly cultural history of popular science would encompass
every aspect of popular culture from leisure and entertainment, to the
factory and the classroom. Its source material would be superstitions, folk
lore, songs, jokes and comic strips as well as advertisements, pulp fiction,
newspapers and school textbooks. I have had to content myself with mass
circulation magazines.
1 Popular Culture
There is something very familiar about late Victorian Britain - the neat
lawns of suburbia, an urban environment saturated with advertisements,
popping down the 'local', watching professional football, eating fish and
chips. Much of what is regarded as 'traditional' in British culture is little
more than a hundred years old, and despite the cataclysmic events of two
world wars the social landscape has remained remarkably untouched.
Major transformations in demographic structure, urban and rural life, pro
duction and consumption, class identity and civic consciousness all
predate the last decade of the nineteenth century, and a good deal of the
twentieth century can be read as a coming to terms with this legacy.
Historical periods are no more than the historian's sleight of hand, but
there is something to be said for the view that the great upheavals of
British social history are better placed in the 1870s and the 1960s than at
any time in between. In many ways the 'character' of late Victorian
Britain resembles Britain of the 1950s more than its early or mid-Victorian
persona, and the 'never had it so good' mentality echoes well the brash
optimism of the 1890s. I
Of course, we must be careful not to overemphasise the continuities,
but the real danger is in how we see the changes. We must be careful not
to look across the wasteland of the Great War and to believe that the grass
really was greener on the other side, the days more peaceful, the summers
hotter, first loves sweeter. With its hint of lost innocence, 'before the war'
can easily give the period that rosy glow of a Golden Age. We would do
well to remember that they were often troubled times and that, with the
exception of a few perceptive individuals, when the war did come it was
greeted not only with shouts of joy but with what can only be described as
a great sigh of relief. Nor were these simply the death throes of Liberal
England as recorded by George Dangerfield. The close of the century also,
and perhaps quite naturally, brought with it a sense of ending.
'Fin de slecle,' murmured Sir Henry.
'Fin de globe,' answered his hostess.2
Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray could well stand as a leitmotif for the
decadence and dandyism of the 1890s, at least for a section of a cultural elite.
In Edwardian High Society such aesthetic sensibilities found a more material
expression in an orgy of conspicuous consumption. Armies of servants sup
ported the mad gaddings of those who were, to J.B. Priestley's eye, 'shallow,