Popularizing Science and Technology in the European Periphery, 1800–2000 (review)

As mentioned by the three editors in the Preface, this book stems from research carried out in the context of the network STEP (Science and Technology in the European Periphery) project, and constitutes its third major published work after A. Simões, A. Carneiro, and M. P. Diogo, eds., Travels of Learning: Towards a Geography of Science in Europe (2003); and “Textbooks in the Scientific Periphery,” Science and Education 15 (2006): 657–880. STEP’s intellectual agenda has been synthesized in K. Gavroglu et al., “Science and Technology in the European Periphery: Some Historiographical Reflections,” History of Science 46 (2008): 153–75.

This volume presents case studies from the “borders” of Europe spanning two hundred years: “Portuguese Botanical Poems,” “Physics Textbooks Circulating around the Continent and the British Islands,” “Scientific Articles in the Spanish Daily Press,” “Chronicles of the Urania Shows in Buda-pest,” “Reports and Articles on Exhibitions in Denmark,” “Belgian Encyclopedias,” “Medical Journals Written in Catalan,” “Articles and Books about Thermodynamics in Spain,” and “Swedish Books on Popular Astronomy.”

The unifying threads connecting this diverse fabric are the attempts to chart different strategies of popularizing science and technology and to understand popularization’s role in the creation of a new science-driven way of thinking in the so-called peripheral countries. The rationale behind these case studies, in which both producers and consumers are brought to the forefront of the analysis, is that the story of the popularization of science and technology is different in European scientific centers from that in countries that played a minor role in defining the core of scientific and technological research. These stories have different scripts, actors, and agendas. The relevance of the “local” (either national or regional, either concerning the scientific, the political, or the economic milieu) is at the heart of the narratives presented here.

The case studies are framed by three more general chapters, two at the beginning and one at the end. The first, by Jonathan Topham, presents a challenging discussion of the concepts of science popularization and popular science, reviewing the literature and placing both in the broader context of the “history of communication in science” (p. 19) and of the making of the “scientific enterprise” (p. 16). In the second chapter, Paola Govoni continues the discussion of both concepts, using her knowledge of the Italian case as an example of the importance of the local. Govoni emphasizes that the center/periphery model must be adapted to admit plurality and change over time: there have been multiple centers and multiple peripheries at different times and in different contexts. While giving locality a major role, Govoni champions a wider vision of the history of popularization of science, one framed as part of a “trans-national, trans-disciplinary and trans-historiographical history of science” (p. 40).

In the Concluding Remarks the three authors/editors present not only the traditional wrap-up, but also a set of stimulating questions addressing the nature of popularization in the so-called European periphery and the value of pursuing case studies as a way of voicing different realities. Clearly, this book is not motivated by a yen to study the “exotic,” but rather by a desire to enrich the history of science and technology with narratives from countries often overshadowed by France, Britain, and Germany. Faidra Papanelopoulou, Agustí Nieto-Galan and Enrique Perdiguero use their experience as STEPers and the rich ongoing discussion on the specificities of peripheral scientific and technological communities to highlight the particularities of popularization in the borders of Europe.

Last but not least the editors provide the readers with an extremely useful selected bibliography (25 pages, around 500 references), which is a precious asset to the book. Although most of the chapters focus on the popularization of science, the exception being the Danish case, which includes an approach to electricity as an icon of progress in late-nineteenth-century exhibitions...