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Science and Culture
Science, as we all recognize, is one of the most lofty expressions of the human spirit. It is the consequence of the irrepressible urge in the human mind to explore, understand, interpret and explain the world of perceived reality. This urge and efforts to give vent to it have been there in all cultures at all times: thus arose all the magnificent mythologies and the ancient insights of pre-modern science.
Since the 16th century, however, germinating from countless fructifying factors, there emerged what has come to be known as modern science whose tools and methodologies have been significantly different from those of its counterparts of previous centuries. What distinguishes this science from all previous ones is that has transcended the boundaries of race and religion, of language and tradition. Today there is an international network of scientists that has no specific national or ethnic affiliation.
Culture is another manifestation of the human spirit an has various different expressions. There is language and literature, art and music, religion and tradition, games and food, custom and costume, politics and poetry: all these are culture-based. They are as varied and colorful as groups in the world. When we travel to different countries, or even to different regions of a single country, we recognize the variety and diversity in cultural expressions.
Thus, we are confronted with the following situation: On the one hand we have science: the all-embracing unifying force in the world at large; and on the other hand we have culture: which is a powerful and enriching indicator of how different human beings can be. How can we put the two in the same bottle?
The answer to this lies in the following: It turns out that practically every manifestation of culture has been affected in one way or another by the emergence of modern science. This is a very crucial point. Ordinarily we are inclined to think that scientists work in their laboratories, bankers in banks, actors in the theater, artists in studios, politicians in government places, etc. But what is interesting is that practically every other activity in human society has been profoundly affected by the rise of modern science. And these influences have been significant enough to transform every human enterprise.
Let us consider a few instances of the impact of science on culture.
Technology: The most
fundamental aspect of any society is its material framework. There can be no
significant contributions to culture and civilization if all the people have to
toil for the bare needs of survival. Whether in ancient
We all know how in many different ways the emergence of modern science has come to the assistance of human muscular exertion in every conceivable manner, and indeed added considerably to the overall quality and comfort of everyday life. The blending of science and technology is in fact a rather recent phenomenon in human history, for many generations in many societies impressive technology flourished without any serious scientific underpinnings. It was not until 19th century with the rise of thermodynamics and the conscious application to the notions of efficiency, breakthroughs in the science of electromagnetism and the consequent invention of the electric motor and the generator, and in our own times, the harnessing of the electron and through our understanding of the laws of the microcosm that technology has become a rich harvest of science.
Literature: The literary
traditions of the human family go back to very ancient times. From primitive
poetry to the great epics and mythologies, ancient literature was largely
religious visions, powered by the human capacity for fantasy and verbal
expression that created great literature. Here again, the rise of modern
science had an enormous influence. If, in the 17th and 18th
centuries, a poet like Pope extolled
But then, the views and discoveries of modern psychology as to the nature, intricacies, and functioning of the human mind have found rich expression plays and novels. Even giving due credit to the these matters produced some of the masterpieces of literature, one will have to grant that a great many literary works of our own times have been inspired by modern scientific understanding of human action and behavior. Then, of course, some poets and essayists have transformed scientific findings into literary compositions. Add to all this the considerable body of writing known as science fiction, and you have some idea of the role of science in literature. Here too, some ancient writers have leaped beyond the everyday reality of the world around, and fantasized on undreamed of possibilities of their times, to create some wonderful situations. However, the science fiction of today is has solid science as its basis.
Philosophy, as a quest for truth and understanding, has always been a hand-maiden of science. Indeed, science itself used to be known as natural philosophy. Its major theoretical branch of epistemology has been seriously affected by the rise of modern science. Indeed, Rene Descartes, who is sometimes regarded as a founder of modern philosophy, was no less one of the founders of modern science. In the course of the 18th century, those who wrote on causality, determinism, freewill, induction, deduction, the capacity of the human mind to understand, etc., were all imbued in the science of the times. Hume, Kant, Laplace, were all versed in 18th century physics.
Epistemology is one of the quintessential components of philosophy. For ultimately, how we investigate truth, whatever it be, how can we know anything at all, if we do not know what knowing and knowledge is. It is deep probing into the nature of human knowledge about space and time that inspired Ernst Mach and eventually enabled Albert Einstein to formulate the theory of relativity.
And of course we all know how our understanding of the microcosm with the rise of quantum physics and the associated principle of indeterminacy gave rise to a host of epistemological problems that have yet to be resolved to the full satisfaction of everyone. Today no one can say or write anything serious or significant in epistemology without some familiarity with the discoveries and world views of quantum physics. Add to this, the cosmological discoveries of the 20th century, and the astrophysical speculations on the fundamental constants, leading to the celebrated anthropic principle, and we have some idea of the role that science has played in the field of philosophy.
What about a field like Ethics which seems to be far removed from science which deals with matter and motion, electricity and magnetism, physiology and neurology? Certainly, most of the basic notions of ethics arose in the context of religions. But science too has played a role our formulation and understanding of ethics.
After all the scientific enterprise itself functions on the basis of certain value systems: such as the disinterested quest for truth, honesty in reporting, objectivity in evaluating situations, etc. Then again, advances in human physiology and psychology have revealed that adhering to some of the traditional ethical injunctions can only have a positive impact on our overall well-being.
Finally, and this is seldom consciously or overtly recognized: the spirit of the Enlightenment - which is not viewed very favorably these days in certain circles - has resulted in many positive changes in human societies. The sense of justice and quality and the rejection of the notions of superiority of one race or creed over others, for example, are new notions which have emerged only after the Scientific Revolution. Gender equality, the demand for human rights, decency in international relations, all these have come about as a result of the more universal system of values that are consonant with the scientific world view and are contradictory to traditional perspectives of the human family which tend to be more parochial.
Finally, and most importantly, as a result of the negative impacts of technology as well as the globalization of trade, information and education, we have become aware of the interconnectedness of the biosphere, of environmental factors, and of web of life. Thus, science becomes relevant in the discussion of global ethics too.
A good deal has been said and written about science and religion. After all, at one time the two were intertwined in many cultures in inseparable ways. In our own times, as we all know, the relationships between science and religion has been drawing more and more attention by scholars. Whether one feels that the two have nothing in common, or that they ultimately lead to the same insights, or that they blatantly contradict each other, one cannot be indifferent to the topic itself.
Less obvious topics for discussion are science and sports, science and music, science and politics, science and food, etc. for in each and every instance science has influenced the growth and development of the field. Through loud-speakers and the radio or computer imitations of Bach, music has been influenced. Through vacuum-packaging and the microwave oven, food habits and cuisine have been affected. The audio tape-recorder has had significant impacts on politics.
The point is, there is not a single domain of human activity or culture in the modern world which has not been touched in one way or another by the rise of modern science. That is why a forum for the exploration of science and its impacts on and interrelations with the various aspects of culture would be of considerable interest in general, and of great importance if we wish to understand and appreciate the role that science has been playing during the past four centuries
INTRODUCTION
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The founding of Science Service in 1920 marks a watershed in the history of the popularization of science. It represents the first successful attempt of the American scientific community to create a permanent independent institution for spreading a knowledge of and sympathy for science among the general public. It also marks the end of a decline and the beginning of a revival in the popularization of science, a revival which Science Service played a significant role in furthering.
Chapter I of this study places the founding of Science Service within the context of the decline and revival of popularization, and explores the motives of its founders which derived in large measure from certain effects, both direct and indirect, of the First World War.
Chapter II documents the history of the first decade of Science Service in its struggle to win a place for its science stories in the newspapers, the problems it encountered in trying to humanize science without vulgarizing it, and its eventual success in the latter part of the twenties in bringing reputable science reporting to the American public.
Chapter III focuses on the content of the popular science of Science Service, taking the writings of Edwin Emery Slosson, director of the Service from 1921 to 1929, as a representative sample. Edwin Slosson was extremely influential in the early development of Science Service, and his tenure as its director provides the time-frame of this study, including as it does the years in which the institutional framework and editorial policies of the Service were determined.
The popularization of science is a subject which has unfortunately received little attention from historians, and consequently there are few precedents on which to model this study. There is one general precept advanced by Charles C. Gillispie, however, which I have adopted as a historiographical principle for the study of popular science. Gillispie remarks in The Edge of Objectivity that scientific ideas have historically been interpreted (or misinterpreted) in accordance with the needs and wants of the culture in which they are introduced. From this inescapable fact Gillispie concludes that "necessarily, the permeation of culture by science must be a problem in accommodation rather than a study in validity.'' 1 I have taken this statement to mean that in the study of the impact of science on culture through the mediating influence of popular science, the historian's task is not to judge whether a given interpretation of a scientific idea is "right" or "wrong," but to understand the cultural forces which shape that interpretation and give it meaning within its historical context. With this goal in mind, this study hopes to contribute toward a greater understanding of the dynamics of the interaction of science and culture.
THE DECLINE OF THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY POPULAR SCIENCE TRADITION - PART - I
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In American scientific circles before the First World War, the popularization of science was equated with the vulgarization of science. In the prewar decades, at least, this prejudice was well-founded. Popular science, particularly in the newspapers, was infamous for its tendency to exaggerate and often falsify the facts of scientific discoveries. In 1915, for example, George Ellery Hale, director of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, found contemporary press coverage of science to be "synonymous with rank sensationalism." 2 If science was mentioned at all in the daily press, it was in terms of magic or miracles, if not mere ridicule. David Dietz, one of the first science writers for the newspapers, claimed it once was standard practice to assign the staff humorist to cover local scientific conventions:
There were two traditional ways of dealing with it. One was to comment on the length and luxuriousness of the beards worn by the assembled scientists. The other was to make a collection of those titles of papers which contained the longest words and the ones least familiar to the ordinary reader. 3
This situation was in
sharp contrast to a vigorous tradition of popularization in the latter part of
the nineteenth century in which scientists themselves played an active role. 4 In
the 1870s and 1880s, many of the most prestigious scientists in the
ten or fifteen years ago, the staple subject here for reading and talk . . . was English poetry and fiction. Now it is English science. Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Darwin, Tyndall have usurped the places of Tennyson and Browning, and Matthew Arnold and Dickens. 6
Nineteenth-century
While the history of the popular science movement of the late nineteenth century is unclear and not well-documented, several factors have been adduced by historians in partial explanation of its origin and of its subsequent decline, which began around the turn of the century. Generally speaking, the impulse to popularize was a product of the scientists' desire to advance the professional development of their discipline. One obvious aspect of this desire was the need to solicit the public recognition and financial support necessary for the advancement of research. As funding began to increase, as in the founding of the Carnegie Institution in 1901 with an endowment of ten million dollars, this motive for popularization assumed less importance. 9
One historian has suggested that another primary function of popular science was to justify the withdrawal of large areas of knowledge from the public domain into the esoteric province of an increasingly specialized science. 10 In a society where science was already regarded as vaguely undemocratic--the eccentric pastime of the leisured aristocracy- 21421c23v -it was particularly important for scientists to communicate the abstract notions of modern science to the masses and convince them that jurisdiction over scientific knowledge by a select group of trained experts was to their own advantage. Also essential to securing public acceptance of science as a profession was the reconciliation of its concepts (e.g., evolution) with traditional cultural values. Hence as science gradually won public acceptance, or at least tolerance, of its arcane and sometimes revolutionary ideas, another motive for popularization was accordingly weakened.
Not only did the professionalization and specialization of science weaken some of the motives for popularizing, but it also made the process of popularization considerably more difficult. Even scientists had trouble understanding developments outside their own fields as science expanded and diversified at an exponential rate. A rough index of this expansion, in terms of the sheer number of practitioners of science, is the increase in membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which rose from 1,925 in 1900 to over eight thousand in 1914. 11 This unprecedented acceleration in growth was accompanied by the increasing use of abstract terminology and mathematical analysis, with the result that the new theories, especially relativity, resisted translation into popular (i.e., catholic) terms. The common-sense language of everyday life no longer seemed quite adequate for communicating the unworldly notions of modern physics. In 1906 the Nation vented the frustrations of the layman on this point with the following observation:
Today, science has withdrawn into realms that are hardly [intelligible]. . . . In short, one may say not that the average cultivated man has given up science, but that science has deserted him. 12
By the time of the First World War, then, popular science had reached a serious state of decline. A new generation of scientists had arisen which clearly preferred the privacy of the laboratory to the public lectern, and popularization lost its status as a respectable sideline of the well-rounded scientific man. That the scientific community was no longer concerned about the public's awareness of science is reflected in the reply of a "distinguished scientist" to an interviewer's comment that the people were ignorant of current research.
"The public does not know what is being accomplished in the laboratories," [the reporter] said. Daniel J. Kevles, "George Ellery Hale, the First World War and the Advancement of Science in "Why should they?" [the scientist] retorted. "It is none of their business." 13
Such an attitude lends
support to science editor David Dietz' observation that the scientists,
receiving little attention from the newspapers, returned the compliment. Even
cooperation with the press was regarded as unprofessional. As Dietz wrote,
"To be caught talking to [a reporter] was to risk your scientific
standing. 14 That the climate of opinion in the
scientific community was hostile toward popularization is also indicated in the
unsuccessful attempt of George Ellery Hale to solicit support for a popular
science journal to be sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. Hale's
proposal was effectively blocked by Academy members from the
The nineteenth-century tradition of popular science had clearly come to an end by 1915 when, after losing ten thousand dollars a year, THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY discovered that popular science and professional science no longer mixed and was forced to split into two magazines, one for the public and one for the scientists. In 1915 the title of Popular Science Monthly was sold to another firm that transformed it into a gadget magazine with many photographs and advertisements. The same year, James McKeen Cattell, editor of Popular Science Monthly since 1900, began a new journal, the Scientific Monthly, with a more professional orientation. Cattell deeply regretted that Edward L. Youman's magazine could no longer fulfill its founder's goals of advancing and diffusing science; he lamented that "the objects are both important, but as science grows in complexity it becomes increasingly difficult to unite them in the same journal.'' 16 It is hardly surprising then, given the increasing resistance of science to popular translation and the scientists' abdication of their role as popularizers, that the gulf between science and the public by the eve of World War I had never been wider.
THE AWAKENING OF THE SCIENTISTS (CHAPTER I - PART II)
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The Great War brought about a dramatic change in the scientists' image of their role in American society, stimulating a renewed interest in popularization which came to fruition in the founding of Science Service in 1920. 17 Activated by the war, two vital concerns of the scientists led to the renaissance of popularization in the 1920s: the solicitation of public support and funding for the centralized organization of science that evolved during the war, and the suppression of a rising tide of antiscientism and irrationalism believed to have been unleashed by the war.
Prior to World War I, most research was conducted by isolated groups in universities and private institutes, and what little research occurred within the government was rigidly pragmatic. With the founding of the National Research Council in 1916 to coordinate war-related research, through the efforts of George Ellery Hale and the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from many fields were united in the collective task of helping win the war. Their participation in the war effort, in the development of gas warfare, submarine detection devices, and artillery-locating equipment, gave them a new awareness of social importance and responsibility. John J. Carty, an engineer for AT&T, exuberantly predicted that
historians of the future of these times will note as the most important thing going on in the world today, not the great war, but the fact of the awakening among men of science to the fact of the immense purpose which they have to fulfill in the affairs of mankind. 18
Historian Robert Kargon thus makes the observation that the war "did in fact focus attention upon the expanded role of scientists in society, and it imbued scientists with a new sense of destiny soon to be realized. 19 This unification of science with national goals proved exhilarating to many scientists, and with the hope of continuing this unity into the postwar era, the National Research Council was made a permanent agency in 1918.
Not only were American scientists awakened by the war to a new sense of destiny, but their brief experience with government funding awakened their appreciation of the potential benefits to science of patronage, both federal and private, and turned their attention to popularization as a means of soliciting such patronage. George Ellery Hale, for instance, stressed that scientists could "multiply the friends of pure science and receive new and larger endowments" if they could convince the industrialists of the importance of research to engineering. 21 In a letter to Hale, John J. Carty stated the case for popularization even more frankly; he wrote that
I am becoming more and more persuaded that the greatest good that can possibly be done the cause of science is to arouse a proper sentiment among the people. If they only knew, they would furnish money by the million and the billion. 22
One historian, Ronald Tobey, has proposed that the scientists' new sense of destiny and their desire to perpetuate the wartime organization of science evolved into an "ideology of national science":
There was no longer a great enterprise like the war effort which would justify the new organization of science. With the expectation of correspondence between their restoring the lost values and broad cultural values and of obtaining new sources of financial support, leading scientists endeavored to convince the public that the scientific method was the ultimate guarantee of the existence of the values of progressivism individualism, political and economic democracy, and progress. 23
The ideology of national science, according to Tobey, was the set of assertions linking science and national values which the scientists attempted to impress upon the public mind, through Science Service and other means of popularization, for the purpose of continuing the centralized organization of science that developed during the war.
Ironically, the national values adopted by the scientists were those of prewar progressivism, as expounded in 1914 by Walter Lippmann, for example, in Drift and Mastery. The war, however, brought disillusionment with the moral idealism of progressives like Woodrow Wilson, and as scientists began promoting science in terms of progressive ideals during the 1920s, intellectuals such as Lippmann were abandoning them. Tobey argues that because the scientific community clung to an outmoded philosophy, and for other reasons as well, its efforts to popularize, including Science Service, were severely hampered in establishing a public consensus on the importance of science to the nation. Although Tobey's conclusion as to the "failure'' of popular science is questionable, and will be addressed later in this study, his analysis does identify a central and pragmatic motive of popularization in the twenties also common in the nineteenth-century popular science tradition, the desire to garner public support and establish new sources of funding for the advancement of American science. 24
Tobey also recognizes, but does not adequately emphasize, a motive for popularization deriving from the conservative reaction of scientists to the First World War and what were perceived as its cultural manifestations. The atrocities of the war convinced many scientists that a tidal wave of irrationality was engulfing the world. During the 1920s, conservative scientists saw this cult of irrationality emerging in such various guises as the revival of astrology, telepathy and other "pseudo-sciences"; a return to "primitivism" in art, music and literature; and certain reactionary tendencies in American society exemplified by the Red Scare, Fundamentalism and the anti-evolution movement. Robert Millikan, for example, the Nobel prize-winning physicist, found himself repelled by what he regarded as the "emotional, destructive, oversexed, neurotic influences . . . of modern art and literature. 25 Scientists hoped to use popular science to counteract this revolt against reason by demonstrating the falsity of the pseudo-sciences, the validity of evolution, and the superior value of the scientific way of thinking. Millikan expressed a widespread sentiment of American scientists when he voiced his belief that the diffusion of the scientific method was "the most important contribution of science to life, for it represents the only hope of the race of ultimately getting out of the jungle at
Particularly upsetting to scientists was the fact that some of the more revolutionary discoveries of science were being used against science. As Henry May states, "much of the authority for the new irrationalism . . . seemed to come from science itself." 27 The breakdown of nineteenth-century materialism, especially in physics, seemed to lend scientific weight to the belief that life transcends man's rational knowledge, and to reopen the door to metaphysics that had been closed by classical, deterministic science. Ouspensky's Tertium Organon, for example, published in 1920, equated Einstein's fourth dimension with consciousness and the spirit world, while relativity was interpreted in some circles as a "declaration of independence from the tyranny of classical physics. Another function of popular science in the 1920s was thus to prevent the misuse of science in the cause of antiscience.
THE NEW PUBLIC INTEREST IN SCIENCE (CHAPTER I - PART III)
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Not only did the war
awaken the scientists to a new vision of the role of science in society, but it
also brought a new public awareness of the influence of science on modern life.
Americans could hardly have failed to be impressed by the importance of
chemistry, for example, which provided synthetic substitutes for raw materials
whose supply was cut off during the war. It was generally recognized that
The rising public interest in science was also stimulated by some of the remarkable discoveries and inventions that were just coming to light. David Dietz observed, for instance, that the advent of commercial radio broadcasting created a "radio craze" in the early 1920s, and people everywhere began constructing their own crystal sets from plans printed in newspapers and magazines. Dietz remarked that relativity generated tremendous public interest as well, in spite of the fact that no one seemed to comprehend it. Dietz noted that "everyone wanted to know more about the Einstein theory, and the more they were told they could not understand it, the more determined they were to hear about it. 30 The theories of Freud, Adler, Jung, and Watson also enjoyed a tremendous vogue; in the 1920s, claims Frederick Lewis Allen in Only Yesterday, "psychology was king.
Perhaps the most tangible impressions of the significance of science came from its technological manifestations such as the radio and other new appliances, the automobile, and the airplane. As Frederick Lewis Allen writes:
The prestige of science was colossal. The man in the street and the woman in the kitchen, confronted on every hand with new machines and devices which they owed to the laboratory, were ready to believe that science could accomplish almost anything . . . .The word science was a shibboleth. To preface a statement with "Science teaches us" was enough to silence argument. 32
As a result of the war and the impressive achievements in science and technology, combined with a simultaneous decline in the prestige of religion, there arose what has been called a "cult of science" that looked to science for the authority and certainty that religion was rapidly losing. 33 Science, in a sense, became the new religion. A quantitative reflection of this shift in the locus of public esteem is indicated by the fact that popular science magazines quadrupled their percentage of total circulation from 1900 to 1930, during which time the circulation of Protestant religious periodicals dropped to one-fifth their former level. The reversal in prestige was so radical that even the clergy turned to science for support. As liberal minister Harry Emerson Fosdick said:
When a prominent scientist comes out strongly for religion, all the churches thank Heaven and take courage as though it were the highest possible compliment to God to have [Sir Arthur] Eddington believe in Him. Science has become the arbiter of this generation's thought. 35
In response to its new popularity, thee "arbiter of this generation's thought" soon became the subject of a flood of popular books, especially in the "outline" format, which distilled a particular branch of science (in some cases the whole of science) into a clearly organized and readable form. Outlines were written about many other topics in the 1920s (the first outline of them all was H. G. Wells' Outline of History in 1921), but scientific subjects were among the most popular. For instance, John Arthur Thomson's Outline of Science, published in 1922, sold more than one hundred thousand copies in five years. There was such a glut of these books (which included five by Edwin Slosson), and they were so well-received that one literary critic has asserted that "never before has the attempt to popularize appeared so intense and so vigorous, and so spectacular in the response." 36 Such a spectacular response, of course, could never have occurred without the increases in the 1920s of leisure time, literacy, and the number of high school and college graduates.
Strangely, however, the newspapers were slow to respond to the new demand for popular knowledge. Silas Bent, author of a study of "ballyhoo" (sensationalism) in the press remarked upon the trend that the "outlines of history, of literature and of philosophy; biographies, and popularized expositions of technical subjects, sold on a comparatively large scale long before the daily press awoke to this new appetite. 38 Bent attributed the awakening of the press to the appearance of press agents for scientific organizations. In 1919, for example, the American Chemical Society began its own news service, and in 1922 the American Association for the Advancement of Science hired its first public relations director. Other contemporary sources, however, give a greater share of credit to Science Service, which, according to a 1933 Carnegie Corporation report, was chiefly responsible for convincing the editors of American newspapers that their readers were interested in science. A principal aim of this study is to support the claim that Science Service was the salient factor in pioneering new standards in science journalism and in exposing relatively large numbers of people, through the daily press, to the concepts and methods of science.
The climate was certainly favorable at the opening of the decade for the founding of such an institution. The war had awakened scientists to the favors popularization might bring, and to the need for spreading the scientific gospel to an increasingly irrational world. The war, exciting new theories, and remarkable technological achievements had simultaneously quickened the public's interest in science, creating a great potential market for popularization. Thus when the outlines and other popular books on science appeared early in the decade they came, according to Will Durant, author of a popular outline on philosophy, "because a million voices called for them. 40
Science Service answered those voices and responded with its own voice, a new voice for science that spoke calmly and with authority as it led the way in satisfying and encouraging the American public's demand for popularized scientific knowledge.
THE FOUNDING OF SCIENCE SERVICE (CHAPTER I - PART IV)
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Science Service was the
product of the fortuitous conjunction of two separate proposals for
popularizing science, one from a group of scientists in
Almost simultaneously,
E. W. Scripps was formulating his own ideas on a scientific news service with
his close friend William E. Ritter, a prominent zoologist at the
to make the greatest possible use of the press in the way of disseminating that knowledge which is the result of painstaking research carried on by a few hundred, or at most a few thousand, well-trained men equipped with great mental capacity. 42
The society was to be a nonprofit news-writing service for supplying articles on science to newspapers, modeled on the Newspaper Enterprise Association, a syndicate founded by Scripps, which presumably would be a customer of the new agency. 43
When Ritter began
soliciting opinions on this scheme from the scientific community, he
serendipitously encountered the
That summer the Science
News Service chose its first editor, Edwin Emery Slosson, a former chemist,
literary editor for the Independent for eighteen years, and author of a
best-selling book on the chemical industries. However, Slosson had also been
approached by Vernon Kellogg of the National Research Council to edit a popular
science journal which some of the
E. W. Scripps, at first
glance, would not appear to be a likely prospect for a patron of science. An
indifferent if not a hostile student, Scripps never went beyond the secondary
schools, and his interest in science did not even begin until he reached middle
age. He did acquire an early love for books from his sister, who read the
classics to him on the
Scripps' admiration for science probably derived from his friendship with William Ritter, from whom he may also have absorbed the scientific community's two concerns of postwar popular science. In a letter to Scripps, Ritter indicated that the purpose of their mutual endeavor was "to make science duly appreciated and adequately supported." 47 In the same letter, Ritter articulated the scientists' fears brought on by the war:
I do not believe it is too much to say that there are few really open, alert minded scientific men in the country who do not recognize, more or less clearly, that the continued progress if not the actual existence of our nation are now in the balance. Probably no scientist anticipates such a collapse as has lately befallen several European nations. Rather they see in the sum total of present conditions and tendencies evidence that unless far reaching modifications in our national life are brought about, the peak of our curve of growth and prosperity is reached, and from now on we shall be sliding down . . . the other slope of the curve. I am quite sure that a goodly number of scientists are convinced that a far wider dissemination among the people than now exists of the results of scientific investigation and of the method and mental attitude of science is indispensable if such national down-sliding is to be averted.
And finally, we know for a certainty that a considerable number of men of science believe that something similar to Science Service is absolutely necessary as one means for accomplishing the results desired. 48
Ritter's letter to Scripps clearly expressed his commitment to the two concerns of the scientific community, to solicit the support for science deemed necessary "for the continued progress if not the actual existence of our nation," and, on the personal level, to inject the ''mental attitude of science" into the minds of the people.
That Scripps fully shared these concerns is indicated in the "Statement of Purpose" of Science Service, probably written at least partly by Scripps, which asserted that Scripps was "convinced . . . of the importance of scientific research to the prosperity of the nation and as a guide to sound thinking and living . . . .. 49 Scripps' concern for the advancement of science is evident not only in his philanthropic ventures mentioned above, but also in the fact that he hoped one result of Science Service would be that scientists increased their income. His desire to enhance the progress of science arose from his fears that democracy was endangered by uncontrollable forces and that science was its only hope for salvation. Though Scripps was a vigorous advocate of democracy and equality (he was strongly pro-labor), he had serious doubts as to the ability of the working classes to wisely exercise their democratic privileges. Scripps expressed this problem in terms of a "syllogism" in which he explained that:
it's useless to think of making the world safe for democracy without thinking of making democracy safe for itself. And the only way of making democracy thus safe is to make it more intelligent. But since to be intelligent is utterly impossible without having much of the knowledge, method and the spirit of science, the only way to make democracy safe is to make it more scientific. 51
Thus, for Scripps, science was the guardian of the democratic way of life, and he believed, with William Ritter, that its "spirit" and "mental attitude" must be impressed upon the common man in order to guarantee domestic and international [sic] tranquillity.
The task of popularization, then, was to "democratize" science and bring it within reach of the many. Scripps' experience as a journalist had convinced him that most Americans, "the 95 percent" as he called them, received the bulk of their education not from the schools but from the daily newspaper. Unfortunately, science coverage in the press had produced only a "vast quantity of misinformation" and "the tales of [scientists'] adventures, dramatic as they are, seldom find their way into print . . . . . 52 What was needed then was an organization to act as an interpreter which, through the newspapers, would translate the concepts of science into "plain United States" and provide "the 95 percent" with the basis for forming intelligent opinions on matters of national importance. Science Service was this organization, the expression of E. W. Scripps' fears for the fate of democracy, his faith in the innate educability of the masses, and his belief that science was the key to progress.
THE EARLY YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1921-25 (CHAPTER II - PART I)
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The first years of Science Service were chaotic and overworked for Edwin Slosson as he slowly built the organization and developed the policies which would guide the Service for many years after his death. 55 He became "the center and circumference of the institution," noted one observer. A tireless worker, a "whirring dynamo" of energy, Slosson raced through a rigorous schedule of conference and correspondence during the day and writing articles and lectures at night. In great demand as a speaker, Slosson gave hundreds of lectures across the country promoting both science and Science Service. In the first year of operation, in fact, Slosson's personal earnings were the greatest source of income for the Service.
Slosson had a heart
condition and the pressures of his new responsibilities may have shortened his
life, according to his son,
Edwin Slosson's first priority was not making money, however, but engaging writers with the rare qualities of both literary talent and scientific training. Such writers were in even shorter supply than Slosson at first had supposed; a letter soliciting science writers was sent to all chapters of Sigma Xi, the scientific honorary society, but received not one reply. 58 Articles in Science pleading for writers who could articulate the dramatic elements in scientific discoveries also met with disappointing results, as did frequent appeals to the trustees of Science Service to help locate graduate students in science who might have a knack for writing. Slosson was forced to recognize that although many scientists were willing to lend moral support to popularization (a great improvement from the prewar years), most would rather do research than write about research. Hence it was not uncommon for advertisements to appear in the Science News-Letter, urging that "anyone who realizes the importance and relative interest of a scientific happening and can give us the facts, is qualified to act as a Science Service correspondent.'' For the time being, Science Service accepted and even invited the work of lay journalists, who at least could put themselves in the position of the average reader more easily than could the scientist.
The problem of finding reporters was aggravated by the fact that most newspaper editors preferred stories written by "big names," but such celebrities, as Slosson noted, were usually poor writers. 61 Science Service met this demand to some extent by calling on its trustees, many of whom were quite distinguished in their fields, including Robert Millikan and George Ellery Hale; Robert M. Yerkes, designer of the Army intelligence tests; Alfred A. Noyes, director of chemical research at the California Institute of Technology; John C. Merriam, president of the Carnegie Institution; and James McKeen Cattell, editor of numerous science journals and the first American to hold a university chair in psychology. Other prominent scientists were also prevailed upon to write occasional articles, such as Harlow Shapley, the astronomer who determined the size and shape of our galaxy; Karl T. Compton, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist; and several foreign scientists, including Sandor Ferenczi, the Freudian psychologist from Hungary; and Albert I, Prince of Monaco, a renowned oceanographer and patron of science. More often, however, the "big names" of science would make special arrangements for supplying information to Science Service. Harlow Shapley, for instance, provided early access to news dispatches from the Harvard Observatory. James McKeen Cattell, as editor of Science, alerted Science Service to important articles before publication. Charles G. Abbot, also a Science Service trustee, provided news from the Smithsonian Institution, which he headed. And as protégé of three national scientific associations, Science Service was privy to newsworthy activities of thosen organizations. Though it was difficult to get prominent scientists to write popular articles, Science Service's close relationship with the top scientific societies at least assured it of a wealth of material to write about.
In effect, Science Service had a privileged position in the scientific community, a condition which presented difficulties as well as advantages. In Edwin Slosson's 1929 annual report to the trustees, he recalled the choice Science Service had had to make early in its career between acting as press agent for the scientific societies or as independent press service. According to Slosson, that choice
virtually involved whether we should be paid by scientific societies or by the press, accordingly regarding ourselves as working in the interest of the public for [or] science. 62
In the early years, at
least, Science Service leaned toward working for the scientific societies,
handling publicity for many of their meetings. The first two projects of the
Service were publicizing (at cost) the annual meetings of the National Academy
of Sciences and the Carnegie Institution in 1921. 63
And later that year, Edwin Slosson (assisted by Watson Davis)
telegraphed over a thousand words daily from
The course of recent events has brought to light one decided advantage to this policy that was not so obvious when the decision was made eight years ago. So many scandals have been disclosed as to the methods employed in certain forms of propaganda for the purpose of influencing public opinion that newspaper editors have acquired an almost pathological aversion to publicity of any sort. Any hand-out, however innocent and informative, excites a feeling of fear and repugnance, so that if Science Service were the official and paid publicity agent of research societies and foundations, it would be impossible for it to get as much space for scientific news, even if furnished free, as we now get paid for by the press. 66
Thus Science Service successfully avoided the appearance of being a paid publicity agent of the scientific societies. However, the fact that the Service was controlled by trustees selected from three of the most prominent scientific associations insured that it would continue its publicizing activities, although informally and without pay, and that its editorial policies would continue to be dominated by the values held by the scientific community.
Edwin Slosson was immensely aided in the development of Science Service by young Watson Davis, who was waiting to apply for a job when Slosson arrived for his first day of work on New Year's Day, 1921. 67 Watson Davis' career, like Slosson's, began in science, in which he spent four years as a civil engineer with the National Bureau of Standards. During the war, he supervised the testing of concrete used in American ships and invented a cardboard molding for making concrete test cylinders. Davis evidently preferred popularizing science to investigating the properties of concrete, for he began moonlighting as a science reporter and in 1920 became science editor of the Washington Herald, in which he originated the first science column, "What's New in Science."
Watson Davis was immediately set to work editing the Science News Bulletin, which was to be the foundation of a regular news service to the newspapers. The Bulletin began on April 2, 1921 as a weekly mimeographed mailing of about five stories sent directly to subscribing papers, of which there were only sixteen in that first difficult year. Soon, though, it proved the most successful of the many projects with which Science Service experimented, steadily increasing its clientele and becoming a daily service on September 11, 1922. The main emphasis of the first few years was not on direct syndication, however, but on trying to work through the established syndicates until the Bulletin was strong enough to stand on its own. This arrangement soon proved unsatisfactory. Although some material was placed with the Newspaper Enterprise Association and United Features was taking a daily articles, neither syndicate found a very large market for articles on science, and what articles they did sell were usually the shorter, more trivial ones. As William Ritter observed, the syndicates were not "in position to utilize the portion of what we furnish that we think most worthwhile.'' 70 In October 1921, the NEA canceled its arrangement with Science Service, and in April of the following year Science Service terminated its arrangement with United Features, which had placed its material with only four newspapers over an eleven month period. To complicate matters, adverse business conditions had created a contraction in the publishing industry that made it difficult to sell articles of any kind to the periodicals. In June 1921, Slosson cited strikes, a slump in advertising, and the high costs of paper and printing as factors that boded ill for the success of the institution. He recalled the complaint of a syndicate salesman who, in the summer of 1920, failed to place a science feature with any of the 129 editors he had canvassed; the frustrated salesman reported that "the angel Gabriel couldn't put out a new feature now."
The first five years of
Science Service's existence were not without accomplishment, however. Though
many of the dozens of new projects that were launched were later scrapped,
others proved viable; in any event, valuable experience was gained. One lesson
of these years was that responsibility for editorial and business policy should
not be divided, as it was when Howard Wheeler was appointed business manager in
February of 1921. When Wheeler was asked to resign early in 1923, Slosson's
duties were expanded to include general supervision of business policy and he
was given the title of Director. Watson Davis was appointed Managing Editor,
handling daily business details in addition to his editing activities.
The following smaller scale ventures were also attempted: special articles by Slosson in World's Work and The Century; a monthly article by Davis in Current History; newspaper features such as "Why the Weather," "Your Health," "Sports of the Ancients," "Nature's Notebook," "Outline of Business," and "Test Yourself"; an arrangement with several publishers for editing popular science books; and even a movie (silent, of course) on how to make a radio. The first half of the 1920s was thus a period of intense experimentation for Science Service, as Edwin Slosson and Watson Davis zealously tested a variety of techniques for selling science to America, or, more accurately, to American editors. Underlying all their attempts, however, was an essential matter of editorial policy which had yet to be resolved; that was the important problem of selling science without selling out to the popular demand (or what most editors perceived was the popular demand) for what Slosson called "snippets of sensational science. 74
THE PROBLEM of SELLING SCIENCE (CHAPTER II - PART II)
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In his first talk to the newly formed board of trustees of Science Service, Edwin Slosson explained the new constraints on popular science posed by the recent absorption of large numbers of people into the literate populace through the recent expansion of the popular press. 75 Slosson recognized that although yellow journalism had greatly increased the "circle of readers," it had done so at the expense of "good taste, high ideals and scientific methods. The expansion of the literate populace had created a tremendous opportunity for disseminating science, but it also required that literary standards and scientific substance be compromised if science was to effectively utilize the mass media. Slosson noted that
the dominant tone of American thought has been changed through the incorporation of large masses of readers of a class which in other countries and in other centuries was altogether untouched by such cultural influence and aspirations. I rejoice in the enlargement of the circle of readers and I do not find fault with the means by which it is gained, but it necessitates new tactics on the part of science if it is to extend its sway. 77
To reach the large audiences opened up by the mass print media would clearly require great changes in the style of popular science.
In a monarchy or other such form of government it would not be so vital that science extend its sway, Slosson explained, "but the success of our experiment in democratic government depends upon the education of the whole people and the recognition of the value of science and technology and in the power of discrimination between scientific and unscientific leadership in thought and politics." 78 Slosson clearly shared E. W. Scripps' belief that democracy, to be made safe for itself, must be made scientific, and hence the impressionable masses must be guided toward an appreciation and understanding of science if the nation was to weather the challenges of the postwar world. Slosson felt that "a real and active hostility to scientific thought" had been triggered by the Great War which showed itself, on the individual level, in a "recrudescence of superstition,'' and, on a political level, in the enactment of anti-evolution laws. In a democratic system whose soundness depended on the ability of the "whole people" to distinguish between truth (i.e., science) and untruth (i.e., pseudo-science), it was of critical importance to implant the scientific spirit in the public mind to counteract these reactionary tendencies. Based upon this conception of the messianic role of science in the American democracy, Edwin Slosson formulated the "new tactics" of Science Service in his 1921 annual report. He began by disavowing any intentions of leading Science Service on a "witch hunt," stating that
I am not advocating that Science Service enter upon a crusade against popular superstition or even an aggressive campaign against the anti-scientific spirit now dominant.
Clearly Slosson would have relished such a campaign, but he acknowledged that the revolt against reason "is too strong for us to attack and besides that would not be good policy." Rather, he concluded,
our best plan is probably to try to crowd out falsehood by truth and to present scientific information in a way that will be at least as attractive as the misinformation that now holds the field. 79
If science was to compete with pseudo-science in the mass media, Slosson recognized that it would have to be tailored to the prevailing modes of popular taste.
Making science
attractive without debasing it was not an easy matter, Slosson acknowledged,
especially when psychologists estimated that the average reader in
This is the mental stage [Slosson continued] in which interest is only taken in the freaks of nature, not its ordinary processes. It is not the rule but the exception to the rule that attracts public attention. That is to say, the public that we are trying to reach in the daily press is in the cultural stage when three-headed calves, Siamese twins and bearded ladies draw the crowd to the side-shows while the menagerie tent is soon vacated. The majority of our contemporaries are in the intellectual epoch of a hundred years ago when Wonders of Science" books were all the rage. 80
Slosson called this cultural level the "Oh, my!" stage of scientific interest, in which the popular appeal of science was based on its sensational, quasi-magical aspects and scientists were viewed as modern-day wizards. It was much easier to get the typical reader to open his mouth than his mind, Slosson complained. 81 To reach the majority of Americans who were entrenched in this cultural mire, Slosson told the trustees that
we must go into the newspapers and their demand is for short paragraphs ending in -est. They refuse to listen to anything except the fastest or the slowest, the hottest or the coldest, the biggest or the smallest, and in any case the newest thing in the world. A worship of superlatives is the worst form of idolatry now present. 82
Although Slosson emphasized that interest in oddities and superlatives was legitimate and that Science Service should not disdain to gratify it, it was imperative that it try to extend this interest to an appreciation of the ordinary phenomena of nature and the fundamental aspects of science. Slosson noted that
we can get into the papers a certain amount of scientific information by giving it a sensational form. That is good as far as it goes. I believe in it . . . . But we must recognize that when we conform to the prevailing sensational demand, we are not getting over the best part of science. We are not educating in the scientific mode of thinking . . . . 83
How, then, was Science
Service to promote scientific thinking and still make its material attractive
to editors who believed, with some justification, that their readers wanted
stories about three-headed calves? Slosson suggested that the answer, in
essence, lay in the motto of every newspaper office: "Put H.
Another advertisement approached poetry in touting the wonders of science reported in the Science News-Letter, proclaiming that
drama lurks in every test-tube, dwells in every shovelful of earth lifted from the sight of an ancient civilization, is a passenger on the wide wings of a whirring airplane, spans thousands of miles via the wonder of radio. To know these facts while news really is news -- that is the desire of every thinking person. 86
With this diluted form
of sensationalism, Science Service hoped to prove to newspaper editors that
science could be made as interesting as pseudo-science. What were some of the
"angles," to use a journalist's term, that Science Service used to romanticize
science? One angle was simply to use eye-catching headlines to lure readers
into tackling the predominantly factual material below them, such as "Man
Sees 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 Miles," "Fabulous Fortunes at Earth's
Center," and "How Nature Changes Sex of Fowls." 87
In his 1921 talk to the trustees, Slosson suggested two other,
more involved approaches involving the history of science and the exploitation
of famous personalities. Exploiting big names, Slosson admitted, gave a
misleading image of science as an occupation of an elite group of geniuses but
"nevertheless, we must recognize the hero-worshipping tendency of the
popular mind and it is not unfair to take advantage of it in increasing the
interest in science." Hence such public figures as the Prince of Monaco,
Albert Einstein, and Madame Curie (all of whom visited the
History of science could also add human interest, Slosson hoped, by showing that science is "a human invention growing and changing and turning this way and that by aggressive personalities or the accidents of history." 89 Slosson was extremely concerned about the public tendency to reject the validity of all science when time-honored concepts such as the ether and the immutability of the elements were challenged. By emphasizing that science is a fallible human enterprise and not a dogmatic set of laws like the Ten Commandments, Slosson believed history of science could humanize science and also prevent the rejection of its validity during periods of theoretical controversy. Although quality material on historical aspects of science proved difficult to procure (the History of Science Society was not founded until 1924), several attempts were made in this area, including "Anniversaries of Science" and "Classics of Science," two features used in the News-Letter with limited success. Unfortunately, a Science Service survey indicated that its history of science material was "notably unpopular.''
One other interesting motif among the many used by Science Service was the casting of the scientist in the role of modern pioneer, with science as the new frontier.
The use of the frontier
and pioneer images as symbols of science and scientists may predate the
twenties by a century or more, but after the closing of the American frontier
in 1893, these images acquired a special significance, particularly for Edwin
Slosson, whose father was one of the first settlers in
the period of the extension of civilization is approaching its end, and beneficial progress must take the form of intensification of civilization. People must cease to expand and begin to construct. There are no more continents to discover, no more worlds to conquer. The new era will require new methods and here the constructive powers of the scientist will come into play. 93
Not only did Slosson believe that the scientist and the pioneer were the purveyors of progress, but there were other similarities as well. The process of discovery, for instance, was at least psychologically identical for both scientist and pioneer, for
the highest reward of science [is] the secret satisfaction of standing where no mortal man has ever stood before . . . . The pure thrill of primal discovery comes only to the explorer who first crosses the crest of the mountain 41 range that divides the unknown from the known. 94
Watson Davis also shared
and exploited this romantic vision of science when he extolled the
"bonanza days of science." In The Advance of Science,
bountiful and exciting has been the progress of science . . . . The advance is swift, the tasks are difficult and complex. But pioneers can still push outward the frontiers into unknown or dimly seen fields. 95
The use of the frontier and pioneer images was not limited, of course, to Science Service. Herbert Hoover, the "Great Engineer," informed Americans that "the great continent of science is as yet explored only on its borders.'' 96 And the New York Times devoted an editorial to praising "those men of science who are the new frontiersmen of civilization . . . ." These pioneers, the Times continued,
are no less the frontiersmen, the precursors, than this republic's early pioneers of the axe, the plow, the rifle and the saddle. They who have patiently enlarged the borders of truth are as deserving sons of democracy as they who have pushed out the physical bounds between the desert and the town. 97
When Science Service
exploited the frontier as a symbol of scientific advance, it thus expressed a
pervasive mythology which not only linked science with traditional American
values of opportunity and individualism, but also provided an appealing
literary technique for romanticizing science. As Slosson was quick to
recognize, "the lives of explorers are always exciting, whether they
penetrate to the heart of Africa like
As Science Service struggled through the early 1920s, therefore, it was compelled to recognize that newspaper editors still preferred "snippets of sensational science." Since E. W. Scripps had stipulated that it market its "product" like any other business enterprise, Science Service was forced, in effect, to modify its popular science to suit current tastes. Thus there evolved a style of science writing that replaced sensationalism with the romance of facts, and science was transformed from lurid side-show to high adventure. The common denominator was human interest--the sacred cow of journalism--but with a more conservative form of emotional appeal and a new emphasis on "wondrous facts, helpful facts." This blending of facts and romance was not the exclusive property of Science Service--a similar style was used in many of the "outlines" of the twenties-but Science Service was the principal agent in using it to convince editors that science deserved a place in the newspapers. By the end of the decade, it was clear that the "romantic facts of research and discovery" were indeed effective propaganda. 99
A NEW VOICE FOR SCIENCE, 1926-29 (CHAPTER II - PART III)
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While the conversion of Science News-Letter to magazine form in 1926 marks the watershed in the first decade of Science Service, its annus mirabilis was 1928. In that year a weekly illustrated feature page was placed in the new Sunday magazine of the Newspaper Enterprise Association, the Scripps syndicate which in 1921 had tried and rejected Science Service material. A still greater success, however, was an arrangement to serve the twenty-six newspapers and three million readers of the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance with the Daily Science News Bulletin and a telegraphic wire service. 100 Edwin Slosson was especially gratified to gain the Scripps papers because it was a "voluntary recognition of the practical value of the Science Service output. At the founding of Science Service, E. W. Scripps had strongly emphasized that his newspapers were not to grant, and Science Service was not to accept, special favors owing to their mutual connection with himself. "It is only now at the end of seven years," Slosson triumphantly announced, "that the national Scripps-Howard organizations have thought it worthwhile to take on our leading syndicate material as a whole."
By the end of the
decade, Science Service features had made tremendous gains in popularity.
Science Service material was serving over one hundred newspapers with a daily
circulation averaging over seven million, nearly one-fifth the total
circulation of the American press. Special wire service was providing
on-the-spot coverage of all the major scientific conventions, from the annual
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science to a
conference on "race betterment." The Science News-Letter had
developed a circulation of nearly ten thousand, had won a prestigious
reputation, and was beginning to pay for itself. New features were multiplying
as fast as Slosson and
Another special service
was underway by the end of the decade that illustrates Science Service's
commitment to reforming popular science writing. This was a project for
reporting archeological and anthropological discoveries. In cooperation with
the National Research Council, Science Service enlisted the aid of
archeologists all over the country to act as "scientific minute men"
who, on short notice, could rush to the site of a discovery and report to
In 1929 Watson Davis began sending out to editors and correspondents an annual list entitled "Stories to Be Careful Of," warning that articles on subjects such as telepathy, cancer "cures," and man-eating trees should be, if not rejected, at least checked with a specialist or Science Service. In arbitrating such controversies, Science Service could invoke the authority of its trustees, advertising that "the leading scientists of the nation cooperate in its work and are in effect its consulting editors." 106
Science Service thus pioneered new standards for science journalism, establishing a reputation for interest and accuracy that was a prime factor in winning it the patronage of American newspapers. Edwin Slosson, for instance, issued guidelines for would-be writers of science which emphasized the need for human interest without irrelevant padding, simplicity without "baby talk," information without obscurity, and, perhaps most important, the need for writing for a general audience. He advised writers to
look out your window and note the first person coming down the street. Imagine yourself stopping this man or woman on the sidewalk, and, like the Ancient Mariner, holding his or her interest till you have told your tale to the end. 107
Watson Davis composed his own rules of science writing, laying down the fundamental principle that "Science Service material must have the approval of the scientific world . . . ." 108 While Davis preferred correspondents with scientific training, all material was in any case to be submitted for correction to the scientist whose work was being reported (or checked by some other authority), and authors' sources of information were to be indicated on their manuscripts.
While Science Service
relied for many years on a scattered corps of freelancers to round out its
science coverage, it was quite successful in assembling a regular staff of
writers, most of whom had science degrees and specialized in reporting on their
own fields of training. Three such reporters were Frank Thone, James Stokely,
and Jane Stafford. Thone, who joined the staff in 1924, had a doctorate in
botany from the
After brief stints as a
biology instructor and naturalist at Yellowstone National Park, Thone came to
Science Service, where he covered biological sciences and wrote the
long-running column, "Nature Ramblings." 110
James Stokely came to Washington in 1925 with graduate and
undergraduate training in biology, psychology, and physics, after several years
experience as a high school biology teacher and press photographer. At Science
Service, Stokely covered psychology and astronomy (in which he was only an
amateur), writing a monthly astronomy column that ran for over fifty years. In 1928 Jane Stafford left the staff of Hygeia, the popular
journal of the American Medical Association, to come to Science Service.
Stafford held a B. A. from
There were a number of other reporters who left Science Service after being trained by Slosson and Davis. Slosson, in fact, claimed the Service had become a school of journalism, training six science writers during the 1920s who went on to careers elsewhere. 113 Indeed, competition in science reporting had increased dramatically by the end of the decade. In 1927, for example, the Associated Press hired two of its own science correspondents; the same year, Waldemar Kaempffert became science editor for the New York Times. Also by this time, most of the major scientific associations had already established public relations offices. In 1929 Slosson noted that "the increased interest in scientific events brings out to all the major meetings a swarm of paid press agents, national press associations, local reporters and free-lance writers, all scrambling for news and newspaper space." While the increased competition made it more difficult for Science Service to sell its materials, Edwin Slosson was gratified by the increased attention for science. He felt that
it is one of the most encouraging signs of the times that newspapers from year to year are giving more attention to scientific subjects and on the whole taking more pains to get them straight. Whereas formerly the average newspaper man would shy off from any science stuff, now the editors do not hesitate to tackle the most recondite subjects. 115
Watson Davis also rejoiced in their new competition, for "we have always sold science rather than Science Service copy to editors." 116 After all, E. W. Scripps had made clear that "our purpose is only to secure in every way possible the spread of science, [and] we should rather congratulate ourselves when we find others doing better than we do." By the end of the decade, Science Service had fulfilled this altruistic purpose in participating as one of the principal agents in the revival and reform of popularization and the awakening of public interest in science. E. W. Scripps' idea had matured into an effective institution.
FROM
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Edwin Slosson was born
in the frontier town of
After a European trip
upon graduation from high school, Slosson enrolled at the
For the next thirteen
years, Slosson taught chemistry at the fledgling
Edwin Slosson spent
seventeen years in
However, Slosson felt
too much the journalist in
Including works on psychology, education, and religion, Slosson wrote a total of eighteen books, twenty technical reports, eighty pamphlets, and over two thousand signed articles, editorials, and essays, of which about four hundred were of a popular scientific nature. 128 In all of his writings, Slosson expressed himself with a distinctive clarity and pungence, with a facility for drawing on metaphors from everyday life to illuminate abstract concepts and using humor to lighten the tone of ponderous subjects. The quantum theory, for instance, he tagged as the "jerk theory," hormones were compared to labor "agitators," and coal-tar resins were likened to "a molecular trust, indissoluble, uncontrollable, and contaminating everything it touched." While his works were always heavily laced with facts, his argument was always easy to follow; Thomas Edison called him "a 'Star' in lucidity. By the end of the decade, Slosson's vivid style and prolific output had won him a wide following. In many ways he was the Isaac Asimov of the 1920s.
As one historian noted,
Edwin Slosson's life seemed a preparation for his career at Science Service. 131
With a doctorate in chemistry and his experience as a
journalist, Slosson was familiar with both the scientific and literary worlds,
and was thus ideally qualified to translate scientific ideas into popular
terms. In fact, his reputation as a "Renaissance man" was such that
JUSTIFICATION BY UTILITY (CHAPTER III - PART II)
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A great deal of Edwin Slosson's popular science was devoted to emphasizing aspects of science--particularly its utilitarian aspects--which would be likely to increase public support for the funding of research. According to Slosson, the recognition of the practical benefits of science was the second phase of the popular appreciation of science (following the "Oh, my!" stage which centered around natural curiosities) and increasing this recognition would benefit both the public and science. 135 Hence he was dismayed by the results of a survey of the utilization of Science Service material which revealed that two of the most popular sciences were "the most remote and impractical of all, archeology and astronomy." In reporting these results to the American Association of Adult Education in 1928, Slosson acknowledged that such "superfluities" form a necessary part of man's intellectual diet, yet he made clear his belief that the applied sciences were the real backbone of modern civilization. However, Slosson deliberately exaggerated the public's impractical interests--perhaps to dramatize his argument in favor of the opposite--for he failed to mention that the most popular stories indicated by the survey were on psychology, most of which concerned the quite practical subject of testing.
Slosson was worried that the public would mistakenly view science as a form of magic and the scientist "as a curious half-crazy creature talking a jargon of his own and absorbed in pursuits of these futilities. 138 In an article entitled "Must Scientists Wear Whiskers?" Slosson tried to counter this Faustian image by asserting that a contemporary convention of scientists "is as clean-shaven, as youthful, and as jazzy as a foregathering of Rotarians.'' The modern scientist, Slosson claimed, is just as worldly as the businessman, for "it is [the scientist], indeed, who made the jazz age practicable; it was his researches into the properties of matter that gave us the automobile, the radio, and, one might add, the saxophone." As Daniel Kevles has noted, by associating science with business and the fruits of technology, popularizers such as Slosson helped make the scientist a respected figure of the 1920s, and established a persuasive appeal for public financial support of science. "Justification by utility," as it has been called, was used by scientists of the nineteenth century and earlier as an argument for the funding of research, and Slosson's use of it had many precedents.
Slosson's popular science
involved more than just altering the scientists' public image, however. It also
provided examples of how abstruse scientific concepts were vital to the life of
the nation. For this purpose, World War I provided effective evidence, and
Slosson's best-selling Creative Chemistry was filled with case histories.
Slosson described, for instance, how science produced the poisonous chlorine
gas used by the Germans and developed the new gases with which the Allies
retaliated. Science also invented the rubber masks necessary for withstanding
the poison gases, and, when
No matter how abstract the theory, sooner or later it would produce tangible results, Slosson argued, for "money invested in scientific research of any sort is sure to prove a profitable investment in the end, though nobody can tell in advance when, to whom, or in what coin the dividends will pay. 144 In some cases scientific theories paid off in hard cash; the principal cause of the great accumulation of wealth in the modern world was applied science, Slosson claimed. Even Einstein's theory of relativity might someday have practical benefits, for as soon as the mathematician invents a new formula, the mechanic snatches it from his hand and puts it to use. While theories such as relativity or heliocentrism may not seem to have practical consequences, they can alter man's world view and thus profoundly influence the current of human affairs. The philosophy of pragmatism, for instance, was inspired by the scientific methods of Ostwald and Poincare. Political systems, too, were derived from scientific innovations; since science provides the basic means of production, Slosson maintained that both "socialism and capitalism are merely by-products of the laboratory.'' Science was also making the world more democratic by abolishing class distinctions. Through artificial synthesis and mass production, science was making the clothing, perfumes, and other paraphernalia of aristocracy available to nearly everyone. Machines made possible by science would eventually eliminate hard labor, thus uniting the classes even further. Not only was the machine the "Great Liberator," it was also the "Great Leveler" and as such was "the most powerful of forces for democracy. In other words, science was the source of economic, intellectual, and political progress.
One historian, Ronald Tobey, has asserted that the principal function of Edwin Slosson's popular science was proving the "fundamental philosophical proposition" that scientific ideas are the prime determinants of human progress. Tobey claims that this proposition was central to the ideology of science evolved by scientists in the postwar era to establish financial support for nationally organized science. 151 Tobey is certainly correct that the progress-inducing nature of science was a central theme of Slosson's popular science. In the tradition of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, Slosson was a vigorous advocate-along with such leading scientists as Robert Millikan--of what Daniel Kevles calls the "conservative syllogism" of the 1920s, i.e., "that science was good for business, business good for America, and, in consequence, science good for the nation's economic and spiritual well-being.'' That Slosson, a staunch Republican, clearly supported this conservative syllogism is indicated by his frequent assertions to the effect that "with science in the lead mankind will make more progress. And he certainly agreed with the Science News-Letter advertisement which proclaimed that "only through the development of science does a nation, a profession, an industry progress.
Slosson's faith in the conservative syllogism and his commitment to popularizing science both derived from his personal theory of the nature of progress. Progress, he speculated, was produced by the intelligent direction of power; power, by the intelligent direction of force. As an example he cited the force in the random motion of gas molecules which the scientist, through discovery of the gas laws, learned how to manipulate to move a piston in an engine; the mechanic then built the automobiles which harnessed the engine's power for the benefit of mankind. 155 The popularizer had a particularly important role in this process in that scientific ideas must be translated and interpreted before they can be applied. The purpose of the scientific interpreter was "to bring the results of scientific investigations as quickly as possible to the knowledge of those who are to put them into effect." By reducing the time lag between scientific discovery and practical application, the popularizer helped accelerate human progress. Thus for Slosson, progress was, by definition, the product of science aided by popular science.
Slosson's sweeping reduction of progress, and indeed all history, to a function of scientific advance strikes the modern reader as circular, if not simply false. Ronald Tobey has noted, for instance, that many of Slosson's claims for science as the sole source of progress are based on post hoc, ergo propter hoc arguments. Tobey cites Slosson's presentation of such diverse historical developments as urban growth and changes in courtship patterns as inevitable products of the automobile, the automobile of the engine, and the engine of the gas laws. With such pseudo-deductive reasoning, Slosson reduced philosophies, political and economic systems, and even wars to the consequences of scientific discoveries. 158 While Tobey is quite right in claiming that Slosson's arguments, as historical generalizations, were patently fallacious, it should be noted that Slosson was writing not as a historian but as a popularizer, and as Tobey himself acknowledges, "the character of popular science . . . prohibited intensive reasoning. It is quite difficult to imagine anyone establishing the truth of a "fundamental philosophical proposition" in the space of five hundred words, the typical length of the majority of Edwin Slosson's writings. Thus to apply rigorous logical criteria, as Tobey does, to a literary form which eschews intensive reasoning in order to reach the widest possible audience, is inappropriate to the spirit and substance of popular science, and severely limits the value to be gained from studying its history. Such an approach, as Charles Gillispie has noted, leads to the pessimistic view that "the history of the influence of science in culture is bound to be the history of a misunderstanding, in which what changes is the way in which the import of science is misunderstood. Such an approach focuses unduly on the faults of Edwin Slosson's popular science, rather than seeking to understand the cultural tensions which it sought to resolve, successfully or not.
One of the cultural
tensions with which Slosson was most concerned was, as mentioned above, the
status of the scientific profession in American society. For Slosson's popular
science to win the American public's support for science, particularly its
financial support, it was not necessary to provide conclusive philosophical
proof that science was the source of all historical change, it was sufficient
merely to associate the scientist with the businessman and scientific ideas
with practical achievements. Although it is true that this "strategy"
at times resembled a public relations campaign, such a tactic is not
necessarily as reprehensible as Tobey seems to suggest. 161
The popularization of science by scientists has traditionally
bordered on the edge of propaganda ever since the need for equipment and
materials exceeded the means of individual scientists. One historian has found,
for instance, that in the popular scientific writings of the eighteenth-century
mathematician, Bernard de Fontenelle, "propaganda for science went hand in
hand with popularization. As secretary of the Academie des Sciences in
Slosson was
well-schooled in the difficulties of financing research during his thirteen
years with the Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station, from 1892 to 1904. In a
study of agricultural experiment station scientists during this period,
historian Charles Rosenberg recounts some of the obstacles encountered by the
young chemists who staffed the station laboratories. 165
In the first place, few station scientists had time for
research, overburdened as they were by questions from farmers and demands for
testing. As
THE SCIENTIFIC HABIT OF MIND (CHAPTER III - PART III)
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Edwin Slosson held that there was yet a third phase in the development of the public's appreciation of science, which advanced beyond mere interest in natural curiosities or the practical applications of science. This third phase involved "the realization of the value of science as a guide in personal and political affairs . . . ." 168 Promoting this realization was the second integral concern of Slosson's popular science. Not only was science the instrument of progress, Slosson argued, it was a way of life, a state of mind, and a guide for correct thinking and behavior. A new era was dawning, the "Era of Enlightenment," in which "science shall devise and direct and not merely interpret." In this new age, foretold by Francis Bacon, science would not only provide the means of living, "it will point out in what direction the human race may progress" and "it will discover what conduct is most conducive to human welfare. To achieve this utopian state of affairs, it was necessary to cultivate the "scientific habit of mind" among the masses, the task not just of popular science but of all education, more important even than the dissemination of useful scientific facts. Once established, the scientific habit of mind would endow the public with the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood and thus make correct decisions on important issues, particularly scientific issues such as racial mixing.
In a democracy, this ability was crucial to the survival of the nation, for "an unsound popular opinion of the scientific question may bring popular ruin to a race." 172 The popular ruin which Slosson most feared was the "degeneration [of the white race] through indiscriminate multiplication of the unfit. The threat of racial decline was not only a source of alarm to Slosson, it was a matter of general concern in the 1920s, a concern that was exacerbated by the studies of reputable scientists. In the Science News-Letter, for instance, it was reported that Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, a prominent anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, had issued a warning at the Race Betterment Conference in 1928 that "the greatest danger before the American people today is the blending of the negro tenth of the population into the superior blood of the white race.'' The science of eugenics, Slosson believed, could prevent race suicide if only the masses could be made to understand that "the fate of a nation depends . . . on how they combine their chromosomes." By giving prominent coverage to eugenics in the publications of Science Service, Slosson hoped to enable the public to make scientifically sound decisions in selecting marriage partners.
A more immediate threat
than racial decline perceived by Edwin Slosson was a moral and intellectual
decline, or, as he worded it, "a reversion to that primitive psychology
that arose out of the [First World War], or out of which the war arose. 177
Despite his exuberant prophesies of a dawning scientific age,
Slosson was deeply troubled by the war and its cultural consequences, which
engendered in him a pessimism from which, according to his son
Slosson detected naturalism in a variety of social and cultural guises, ranging from stream-of-consciousness literature to the "primitive African rhythms" of modern music. One of his most vivid passages is a diatribe against this "cult of naturalism."
The cult of naturalism is now dominant everywhere. The call of the wild is drowning out the appeal of civilization. "Back to barbarism!" is the slogan of the hour. Sink into savagery. Praise the country and denounce the city. Admire cliffs but make fun of skyscrapers. Extol forests and despise laboratories. Exalt the physical and ignore the intellectual. Spend half a million dollars on a new stadium and let the old library go to ruin. Abolish compulsory Latin and establish compulsory swimming. Patronize football and neglect debating. Up with the soldier and down with the savant. Promote pugilism and suppress pacifism. Jazz your music and cube your painting . . . . Condemn everything new and worship everything old . . . . Reprove and repress the Christian virtues of kindliness and universal sympathy . . . . The dominant tendency of the times is undoubtedly downward and backward, and the advance of science and the uplift of religion have not yet availed to check it. 181
To Slosson, naturalism was essentially an antiprogress movement representing a return to the barbaric customs whose sublimation was the whole purpose of civilization. 182
The rise of supernaturalism was perhaps an even more virulent threat. In his "sermon" on "The Revival of Witchcraft," Slosson predicted that an archeologist of the far future, who chanced upon the popular newspapers of the 1920s, would reach some startling conclusions.
[The archeologist] would conclude from reading these papers that astrology was more in vogue than astronomy, that our medicine was mostly magic, that the credulity of the common people was bound- less, and that the practice of necromancy, divination, and other forms of witchcraft provided popular and profitable professions. 183
To compound the problem, the work of certain men of science, such as Sir Oliver Lodge and William Crookes, was contributing to the "recrudescence of superstition," and certain scientific concepts, such as Freud's notion of the unconscious, were being drafted by nonscientists in defense of a spirit world. 184 Slosson complained that Einstein's fourth dimension, for instance, was widely misconstrued as "the abode of departed spirits, a spare room for ghostly visitors." While certain scientists and scientific theories seemed to fuel the revival of mysticism, Slosson was even more concerned that the revolution in twentieth-century science had created confusion and alarm in the public mind, shaking its faith in science and reason, and leaving the masses vulnerable to superstitious cults. In Easy Lessons in Einstein, Slosson wrote that
there
is a feeling among the general public interested in such things that the
foundations of modern science are being swept away by the recent discoveries.
The layman has been led to believe that such laws as gravitation, the
conservation of matter and the immutability of the elements are the most
certain and absolute truths of science. But now he hears reputable men of
science talk calmly about the decay of matter and the transformation of one
element into another, and gravely consider a theory which makes invalid
To the man on the street science seemed to be committing suicide, and as its influence on the popular mind began to wane, the public, Slosson thought, was turning to the nostrums of supernaturalism.
Edwin Slosson's
sometimes bitter denunciations of the reversion to naturalism and
supernaturalism derived from his fundamental belief that both Christianity and
science called upon man to rise above his animal origins and conquer both
nature and his own natural impulses. In Creative Chemistry, Slosson proclaimed
that "the conquest of nature, not the imitation of nature, is the whole
duty of man," a sentiment which, in another work, he asserted was the
central theme of his book. 187
Repeatedly in that work he argued that nature "is our
treacherous and unsleeping foe, ever to be feared and watched and circumvented
. . . ." Slosson's aversion to nature at
times bordered on the pathological, at least from a modern point of view. This
is illustrated by an incident described by Slosson himself which occurred
during a college class-session he was observing, in which a female student
stated that the aim of science was "'the study of nature so that Man may
learn to live in accordance with the course of Nature.'" In our present
era of ecological awareness such a definition would be applauded. However,
Slosson found it "false and heathenish" and "rose in wrath"
to reprimand her, proposing instead that "'the aim of science is to enable
man to seize the forces of Nature so that he may frustrate the course of
Nature.'" Describing the girl as ungrateful for the warm buildings,
clothes, and automobiles made possible by science, he concluded that "she
probably rarely used her own legs except for dancing and then to very unnatural
music. A reviewer of Creative Chemistry
understandably thought that Slosson had a "grudge" against nature,
and perhaps he did, considering that his memories of his youth in frontier
One way in which Edwin Slosson's popular science attempted to oppose the reversion to barbarism was by reassuring the public that the revolution in science was a benign metamorphosis and not a destructive dissolution. In this way, Slosson hoped to prevent the public from losing confidence in science and turning to mysticism. With this purpose in mind, Slosson soothingly argued that "really, the new discoveries are not so upsetting to science as they appear to the general public . . . .'' 192 He acknowledged that "science is molting now and looks queer," but maintained that "the public ought to understand that the process means growth and not decay.
In addition to such "pep talks" intended to calm public anxieties about modern science, Slosson offered a pragmatic philosophy of science which downplayed the importance of theories, believing that the public's shocked reaction to the new scientific discoveries was the result of a failure to understand that theories were only useful tools, not immutable laws of nature. In an article entitled "The Fiction of Force," Slosson asserted that while the layman mistakenly believed that theoretical constructs such as the luminiferous ether actually existed, scientists regarded them as only useful, though imperfect, hypotheses. The concept of force, for instance, which had been radically altered by Einstein, had never been intended as a statement of truth, but only as a mathematical expression used to symbolize an incompletely understood natural phenomenon. In a somewhat condescending tone Slosson remarked that
as of old the multitude will mistake the symbol for the reality and they will be shocked when some iconoclast [such as Einstein] smashes up with his hammer the idols they have regarded as absolute and eternal. 194
If the public could only be made to recognize the difference between the ephemeral theories of science and the eternal facts of nature, it would not lose its confidence in science when old, familiar theories were rejected. Since theories are only useful hypotheses, it followed that their truth or falsehood was of little importance to the scientist, who cared only how much they might aid him in discovering new facts. Thus a change in theory is of little consequence, for the facts of science never change and it is the gradual accumulation of facts which constitutes the real achievement of the scientific enterprise. Slosson explained that while the scientist adheres firmly to the facts of science, he holds his theories very loosely, adding that
the scientist never bothers his head with the question whether a particular theory is true or false. He considers it simply as more or less useful, more or less adequate, succinct and comprehensive. A theory is merely a tool, and he drops one theory and picks up another at will and without a thought of inconsistency, just as a carpenter drops his saw and picks up his chisel. 195
And as the carpenter drops his saw and picks up his chisel, so the physicist uses wave theory to explain one group of phenomena and quantum theory for another, and there was no contradiction in doing so and no reason to believe that the revolution in science had created intellectual anarchy. Besides, new theories do not abolish old theories, they merely explain and synthesize more facts than the old theories, for "revolutions in science do not destroy; they extend. 196 In science, Slosson claimed,
revolutions . . . never go backwards, and they differ from political revolutions in that nothing worth saving is lost. The new theory must always include all that the old one does and more. In their struggle for existence formulas fight like 80 snakes; the one that can swallow the other beats. 197
Through such pragmatic arguments Slosson tried to rally the public's flagging faith in science and prevent the defection of the masses to mysticism, a task which he regarded as his solemn duty as both a scientist and a Christian.
CONCLUSIONS
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When Edwin Slosson died
late in 1929, it was left to his successor, Watson Davis, to summarize the
achievements of Science Service in the 1920s. In a glowing fin de decade report
to the board of trustees,
What has Science Service accomplished in the nine years of its active existence? The spirit of the public toward science and the spirit of the scientific world toward the public has changed. Science Service cannot claim full responsibility and credit for this metamorphosis, but it can be said fairly that its pioneering in the presentation of accurate and interesting accounts of science to the public through the press has been a major contribution.
Today Science Service is not alone in the reporting of science for the press. It welcomes other great news agencies and institutions to this important work. It is proud to have pointed the way. It is ready to aid in the better accomplishment of the great task.
Its own product is spread throughout the land on the pages of newspapers, magazines, books and in the voices of the ether. It stands beside telescopes and anthills, it travels with explorers of time, matter and thought. Where science leads, it willingly follows in order that it guide the multitudes to the safe blazed paths. 198
As this study has attempted to demonstrate, Science Service was indeed instrumental in awakening the scientists, the public, and the press to the importance of science in American society, though with varying degrees of success.
Regarding the improvement in the scientists' attitude toward society, Science Service was more a product than a cause, for it was founded by men such as George Ellery Hale and William E. Ritter, who hoped that popularization would develop the public support needed to continue the centrally-organized structure of science evolved during the First World War. World War I had demonstrated to the scientists that their profession could be of critical importance to the nation and that the nation, in turn, could be of great assistance to science. By providing scientists with accurate reporting of their work, Science Service may have contributed toward improving their willingness to have their research publicized, but the influence was strictly secondary to that of the war.
The impact of Science Service on the American daily press, however, was much more pronounced, resulting in a marked upturn in the quantity and quality of popular scientific reporting. Science Service was chiefly responsible for selling science to newspaper editors and for increasing by twentyfold the amount of newspaper space devoted to science during the 1920s, according to Benjamin Gruenberg in his report on Science and the Public Mind. 199 It was able to accomplish this by substituting "romance" for sensationalism as a tactic for attracting readers, and establishing new standards of accuracy in reporting the facts ,of science. The venerable historian of American journalism, Frank Luther Mott, has given a large share of the credit to Science Service for stimulating a general reform in science reporting. And in a master's thesis entitled "A History of Science Writing in the United States," by Carolyn Hay of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the founding of Science Service is cited as one of the landmarks in the history of science writing which led to the emergence of science journalism as a full-time profession. Science Service played an important role in the professionalization of science journalism through the promotion of high standards and its training of science writers, a large number of whom moved on to careers elsewhere. In 1934 the community of science journalists was large enough to organize itself as the National Association of Science Writers, of which Watson Davis and Robert Potter (also of Science Service) were founding members. Not only did Science Service succeed in establishing a place for science news in the daily press, but it altruistically sought to improve the quality of science journalism as a whole.
Science Service undoubtedly increased public appreciation of science in the 1920s, though to what extent is almost impossible to say. Certainly the fact that its news stories were used by over one hundred newspapers, with readers numbering almost one-fifth the total circulation of the American press, indicates that the Service had cultivated a substantial audience by the end of the decade. 203 One should remember, of course, that when Science Service was founded in 1920, popular interest had already been aroused by the dramatic war-time applications of science, the radio craze, and the relativity controversy, and thus the Service's contribution was not so much in stimulating public curiosity as in nurturing it. Whether the scientists' postwar concerns of establishing financial support and public sympathy for science were fully realized is less certain. In regard to establishing "adequate support" for science, the impact of Science Service is extremely difficult to evaluate, though of certain facts we may be sure. Funding for scientific research did increase in the 1920s; the number of industrial research laboratories, for instance, more than tripled. However, an ambitious drive begun in 1925 to establish a National Research Endowment of twenty million dollars had collapsed by 1932, the victim of the Depression and other complex factors. Though popularization may have contributed to securing financial support for science in a minor, indirect way, it very definitely did not produce "money by the million and the billion" as John J. Carty had anticipated. Whether Science Service helped make science "duly appreciated," in the sense of making the public think more scientifically and less irrationally, is equally difficult to determine. Edwin Slosson, during his last years of life, claimed he could find no signs of improvement in American culture. In his first annual report to the board of trustees in 1921, he had called attention to "the wave of superstition and reaction which is now sweeping over the world . . . . At that time some of the trustees regarded his opinion as overly pessimistic, but near the end of the decade, Slosson observed that this reactionary movement had developed far more rapidly than he had foreseen, as manifested by the conviction of John Scopes in 1925 for teaching the theory of evolution. Slosson was deeply disturbed by the growing number of anti-evolution laws around the country, and when the famous controversy at Dayton, Tennessee, took place, he initiated in Science News-Letter a series of articles by various biologists entitled "Evidence for Evolution," sent Watson Davis and Frank Thone to cover the trial, and personally assisted in coordinating the testimony to be given by leading scientists on the validity of evolution. Slosson was frequently in contact with Clarence Darrow during the trial, helping arrange the scientific defense, though their efforts proved fruitless since the judge refused to allow the scientists' testimony to be heard. When Scopes was finally convicted, Science Service sponsored a fund-raising drive to help send him to graduate school. After Scopes' defeat and the passage of anti-evolution laws in other states, Slosson saw little hope for civilization, concluding that "the anti-scientific spirit still prevails and superstition continues to advance. Edwin Slosson died on October 15, 1929, unable to discern any encouraging signs in American life, and if he had lived to see the Stock Market crash on October 24, only nine days after he died, he undoubtedly would have believed that his most dismal prophesies had been fulfilled.
We may conclude, then, that Science Service truly did constitute a new voice for science in its unprecedented dedication to accurate and authoritative reporting of scientific news. After the founding of Science Service in 1920, the popularization of science could no longer be equated with the vulgarization of science. However, Science Service was a voice which, because of its close ties with a conservative scientific community, became a spokesman for the ideological commitments of that community, to solicit support for the advancement of science and to encourage scientific thinking in the public mind.
That a disturbing element of elitism was implicit, if not always explicit, in the scientists' two concerns of postwar popular science is readily apparent in almost any of Edwin Slosson's writings. Slosson and many other scientists of the 1920s clearly viewed themselves as the advance guard of civilization, whose moral obligation was to lead the inferior "multitudes" down the "safe blazed paths" of science, as Watson Davis so aptly phrased it. 211 Accordingly, any movement that threatened to impede the march of scientific progress, be it racial mixing, abstract art, or a revival in astrology, was labeled as antiscientific, irrational, and hence immoral.
In a sense, however, Slosson's elitism was justifiable in that the vast achievements of science in the early twentieth century did seem to promise a better world, an "Era of Enlightenment" as Slosson called it, in which man would be freed from the tyranny of hard labor and encrusted prejudices. And Slosson and his fellow scientists can hardly be blamed for propagandizing on behalf of the instrument which they believed would usher in this new era, or for spreading the gospel to those whom it might greatly benefit. Yet it would seem that a truly popular science should do more than just proselytize. As Oscar Handlin has perceptively remarked in his essay on science and popular culture, "the profound uneasiness about the consequences of the new ways of knowing will be quieted only if science is encompassed within institutions which legitimate its purpose and connect its practitioners with the populace. 212 While Science Service should be regarded as a first, significant step toward the development of such an institution, in the 1920s it fell far short of establishing a genuine rapprochement between science and the public. Even though Edwin Slosson, in his first annual report to the trustees, disclaimed any intention of leading Science Service on a crusade against the anti-scientific spirit, as the decade wore on his evangelistic inclinations increasingly swayed his writings and the policies of Science Service in that direction. So intense was his vision of a world remade by science, and so fervent was his desire to implant that vision in the mind of the "multitudes," that the popular science of Science Service under Edwin Slosson came remarkably close to resembling the sermons of a former chemist.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuscript Sources
Science Service, Inc.,
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Smithsonian Archives,
Science Service Records.
Primary Published Sources - Books
Caldwell, Otis W., and Slosson, Edwin E., eds. Science Remaking the World. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1924.
Davis, Watson. The Advance of Science. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1934.
Gruenberg, Benjamin.
Science and the Public Mind.
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Modern Temper.
Lippman, Walter. Drift and Mastery. Mitchell Kennerly, 1914; reprint ed., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961.
McCabe, Charles R., ed.
Damned Old Crank, A Self-Portrait of E. W. Scripps.
Slosson, Edwin E. Chats
on Science.
Creative Chemistry.
1919; new ed., rev. And enl. by Harrison E. Howe,
Easy Lessons in
Einstein.
A Number of Things.
Arranged and with: a biographical memoir by Preston William Slosson.
Sermons of a Chemist.
Short Talks on Science.
Snapshots of Science.
ed. Keeping Up With
Science.
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Cattell, James McKeen. "The Scientific Monthly and the Popular Science Monthly." Popular Science Monthly 87 (September 1915):307-308.
[Davis, Watson.] "About Writing for Science Service."In "Hints for Writing Science." Science News- Letter, July 1, 1950, p. 13.
"Declares Progress an Illusion; Urges Eugenics as a Religion." Science News Bulletin, June 20, 1921, p. 6.
Dietz, David. "A Bit of Early History About the Science Writing Art By An Early Practitioner." Newsletter of the National Association of Science Writers 25 (Fall 1977):26-27.
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MacDill, Marjorie. "Will Blending of Races Produce Super-Men?" Science News-Letter, November 26, 1927, p. 337 ff.
Millikan, Robert.
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Allen, Frederick L. An
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