Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qlrfm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-15T22:00:15.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Science and Education of Joseph Henry - Nathan Reingold, ed., The Papers of Joseph Henry, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975. 524 + xxxix pp. $30.00. - Arthur P. Molella, ed., A Scientist in American Life: Essays and Lectures of Joseph Henry. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980. 136 + vii pp.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Hyman Kuritz*
Affiliation:
The State University of New York at Albany

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Essay Review I
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Molella, Arthur P. (ed.), A Scientist in American Life: Essays and Lectures of Joseph Henry, (Washington, D.C., 1980), p. 47.Google Scholar

2. Bender, Thomas, “Science and the Culture of American Communities: The Nineteenth Century,” History of Education Quarterly 16 (1976): 6377.Google Scholar

3. Quoted in Thackray, Arnold, (ed.), Science and Values (New York, 1974), p. 3.Google Scholar

4. Reingold, Nathan (ed.), The Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol. 2, pp. xxiixxiv, 28–29.Google Scholar

5. An indispensable starting point on this subject is Rupert Hall, A., “The Scholar and the Craftsman in the Scientific Revolution,” in Clagett, Marshall (ed.), Critical Problems in the History of Science (Madison, 1959). See also Burns, Rex, “The Social Character of Technology,” Impact, 7 (1956): 150–51, 155.Google Scholar

6. Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Early Modern Era, trans. Attanasio, Salvator and edited by Nelson, Benjamin (New York, 1970), p. 112.Google Scholar

7. Molella, (ed.), Essays and Lectures, p. 66. Henry's essay, “Closing Address before the Metropolitan Mechanics' Institute,” pp. 54–70, is a full exposition of his approach to this subject.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 63.Google Scholar

9. Ravetz, Jerome R., Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (Oxford, 1971), 7576, 109, 117–118, 144.Google Scholar

10. Paolo Rossi, in Philosophy, Technology and the Arts, pp. 61–62. For a perceptive theoretical statement on this subject, see Polanyi, Michael, Personal Knowledge (New York, 1958), pp. 8687.Google Scholar

11. Aronowitz, Stanley, False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness (New York, 1973), pp. 155–56. For a more complete analysis of this point see Sohn-Rethel, Alfred, Intellectuals and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1978).Google Scholar

12. Wallace, Anthony F. C., Rockdale: the Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (New York, 1978), p. 150.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., pp. 212–15.Google Scholar

14. Molella, (ed.), Essays and Lectures, pp. 1722.Google Scholar

15. The classic model was the Paris Academy of Sciences. See Hahn, Roger, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971). See also, Tilly, Louise A., “From Provincial Culture to the Paris Academy,” History of Education Quarterly, 14 (Winter 1974): 519–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Miller, Lillian B., The Lazzaroni: Science and Scientists in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America (Washington, D.C., 1972); Beach, Mark, “Was There a Scientific Lazzaroni?” in Daniels, George (ed.), Nineteenth-Century American Science: A Reappraisal (Evanston, Illinois, 1972), pp. 115–32.Google Scholar

17. Reingold, , The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 2, pp. 290–91, n. 13.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., pp. 110111.Google Scholar

19. Molella, (ed.), Essays and Lectures, pp. 126–27. For a fine exposition on these tensions see Ezrahi, Yaron, “The Authority of Science in Politics,” in Thackray, Arnold (ed.), Science and Values (New York, 1974), pp. 224–25. For professionalization in science see Reingold, Nathan, “Definitions and Speculations: The Professionalization of Science in America in the Nineteenth Century,” in Oleson, Alexandra (ed.), The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic (Baltimore and London, 1976), pp. 33–69; Kohlstadt, Sally Gregory, The Formation of the American Scientific Community (Urbana, Illinois, 1976).Google Scholar

20. Molella, (ed.), Essays and Lectures, p. 38.Google Scholar

21. The Mechanics' Free Press, (Philadelphia), (July 18, 1829).Google Scholar

22. It is often forgotten that the Friends of Education, the supporters of the common school movement, were composed not only of prominent Whigs and Federalists, business and professional people, but also of artisans who had quite different views about how their children should be educated. See Montgomery, David, “The Shuttle and the Cross: Weavers and Artisans in the Kensington Riots of 1844,” Journal of Social History 5 (1972): 423–24. Along the same lines see Boston Mechanic and Journal of the Useful Arts, quoting The Journal of Health on the importance of health education for workers. They work in “damp and unhealthy mines, in wells and cellars subject to poisonous fumes, lack of exercise, use of certain tools, and instruments. Should workers depend on professionals to guide them? No. If they [the workers] know the principles they will respond better and, secondly, they know their peculiar circumstances and can apply rules accordingly better than the general approaches of the professional.” 4 (April 1835): 11–12.Google Scholar

23. Quoted in The Workingman's Advocate, New York (April 17, 1830).Google Scholar

24. From Ferguson, Eugene S. (ed.), Early Engineering Reminiscences (1815–40) of George Escol Sellers (Washington, D.C., 1965), p. 38, quoted in Wallace, , Rockdale, pp. 227–28. See also Rosenberg, Nathan, Technology and American Economic Growth (New York, 1972), pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

25. Wallace, , Rockdale, pp. 232–33.Google Scholar