Science and Salvation
Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain
432 pages
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38 halftones, 8 line drawings, 7 tables
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6 x 9
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© 2004
Threatened by the proliferation of cheap, mass-produced publications, the Religious Tract Society issued a series of publications on popular science during the 1840s. The books were intended to counter the developing notion that science and faith were mutually exclusive, and the Society's authors employed a full repertoire of evangelical techniques—low prices, simple language, carefully structured narratives—to convert their readers. The application of such techniques to popular science resulted in one of the most widely available sources of information on the sciences in the Victorian era.
A fascinating study of the tenuous relationship between science and religion in evangelical publishing, Science and Salvation examines questions of practice and faith from a fresh perspective. Rather than highlighting works by expert men of science, Aileen Fyfe instead considers a group of relatively undistinguished authors who used thinly veiled Christian rhetoric to educate first, but to convert as well. This important volume is destined to become essential reading for historians of science, religion, and publishing alike.
A fascinating study of the tenuous relationship between science and religion in evangelical publishing, Science and Salvation examines questions of practice and faith from a fresh perspective. Rather than highlighting works by expert men of science, Aileen Fyfe instead considers a group of relatively undistinguished authors who used thinly veiled Christian rhetoric to educate first, but to convert as well. This important volume is destined to become essential reading for historians of science, religion, and publishing alike.
"Fyfe has written an original and highly stimulating study that elucidates the fascinating ways in which evangelicals sought to embrace science on their own terms and to serve their own purposes. . . . Fyfe deepens our knowledge of the Victorian world and convincingly demolishes stereotypes of disengaged or disputatious evangelicals. Science and Salvation is replete with interesting episodes and thought-provoking asides. . . . Well researched, intriguing and rewarding."—William J. Astore, Endeavour
"Fyfe's book has the same satisfying appeal as the detailed and illuminating works on popular reception of such leaders in the field of the history of nineteenth century science as Adrian Desmond and James Secord."
"One of the great merits of this book is to provide insights into ordinary people and popular conceptions of science. These are critically important for an understanding of the wider place of science in society."—Colin A. Russell, Notes & Records of the Royal Society
"What makes Fyfe's study so outstanding is that she does not just address the ideological issues but examines how the evangelicals of the RTS practically addressed the problems they faced."
"For the student of Victorian publishing, Victorian religion, andVictorian science, this book is an essential read."—Roger Cooter, Sharp News
"Fyfe's close study enables her to contribute significantly to the historical trend away from theologically based armchair debates over science and religion."
“From Reformation pamphleteers to today’s television evangelists, protestant Christians have employed the latest technologies to preach the gospel message. Science and Salvation explores the crucial moment in the Victorian era when factory-produced print made it possible to reach a mass audience. Filled with telling vignettes of theological grub-street and commercial science publishing, this ground-breaking study offers a refreshingly practical perspective on the relations between science and religion.”
<James A. Secord, author of Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
<James A. Secord, author of Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
“Who controls the cultural meaning of science? In Victorian Britain, science popularization was often perceived as corrosive of religious faith or at best silent on the sacred. Aileen Fyfe's sensitive analysis of religious responses sweeps away the clichés by showing that evangelical publishers retaliated with their own popularizations of science, so framed as to be Christian in tone. An excellent read and a most welcome addition to the revisionist literature on evangelicalism and science.” <John H. Brooke, author of Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives
“Aileen Fyfe makes major contributions simultaneously to the cultural history of science, religion, and book publishing. This book takes its readers way beyond the strata of Victorian scientific experts and into the worlds of evangelical writers and preachers eager to save both science and souls from the fires of infidelity. It is also a significant step toward decentering Darwinian scholarship from Victorian studies.” <Crosbie Smith, author of The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain
“In a pioneering analysis of Victorian popular science and evangelical religion, Aileen Fyfe conjures into visibility a fugitive literature that casts light on hitherto unexplored corners of the history of science, religion, and society. With insight and surefootedness, she guides us through a forgotten world of scientific apologetics, evangelical strategizing, and cheap print. Science and Salvation thus gets a finger on the pulse of popular religious and scientific culture in a seriously new way. An altogether arresting achievement.” <David N. Livingstone, author of Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge
"Evangelical Christians in mid-nineteenth-century Britain were neither hostile to science nor ignorant of its developments. Aileen Fyfe shows that the Religious Tract Society, one of the major evangelical publishers, issued popular literature on astronomy and zoology as much as on history or biography. By lucidly explaining the Christian tone that Religious Tract Society writers gave to scientific subjects, the author sheds fresh light on a neglected facet of Victorian culture. <David Bebbington, author of The Mind of Gladstone: Religion, Homer and Politics
"[Science and Salvation] manages to achieve something that is quite remarkable in a field that has been so thoroughly picked over--it reveals new characters, new stories, and new truths about the wonderfully Byzantiner religious context of nineteenth-century Victorian science."
"With its deliberate shift in focus from the more well-known and extensively studied expert men of science and professional theologians to the ranks of evangelical preachers and mass-market writers, Fyfe's Science and Salvation is a welcome addition to the recent historiography of the intertwined paths of science and religion in Victorian popular culture."
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Threat of Popular Science
Christian Knowledge
Reading Fish
The Techniques of Evangelical Publishing
The Ministry of the Press
Reinterpreting Science
Postscript
Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of RTS Writers and Staff
Appendix B: Volumes of the "Monthly Series"
References
Index
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Threat of Popular Science
Christian Knowledge
Reading Fish
The Techniques of Evangelical Publishing
The Ministry of the Press
Reinterpreting Science
Postscript
Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of RTS Writers and Staff
Appendix B: Volumes of the "Monthly Series"
References
Index
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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History: British History | General History
Library Science and Publishing: Publishing
Religion: Religion and Society
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