What do you think?
Rate this book
Sins against Science: The Scientific Media Hoaxes of Poe, Twain, and Others
Lynda Walsh explores a provocative era in American history—the proliferation of fake news stories about scientific and technological discoveries from 1830 to 1880. These hoaxes, which fooled thousands of readers, offer a first-hand look at an intriguing guerilla tactic in the historical struggle between arts and sciences in America. Focusing on the hoaxes of Richard Adams Locke, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Dan De Quille, the author combines rhetorical hermeneutics, linguistic pragmatics, and reader-response theory to answer three primary How did the hoaxes work? What were the hoaxers trying to accomplish? And—what is a hoax?
Hardcover
First published February 1, 2007
25 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 11, 2015
Admission: this review will not be fair.
Lynda Walsh is a professor of English and primarily interested in rhetoric, its theory and practice. I don't really care about that topic. What interests me is what she applies her rhetorician skills to understanding: a vogue for scientific hoaxes in the middle third of the nineteenth century.
Mostly, then, I am reading against her primary interests. Which means much of the book is of little interest to me--and, indeed, from my perspective tends to obscure the more interesting bits. The introductory chapter has the feel of a dissertation--presumably the source of this book--and the second chapter continues that feel, with a long bit on the theory underlying her book. What I took from these parts is that she is interested in hoaxing because it is neither a purely literary thing--it cannot be understood just from the words on the paper--but also connects to the manner in which people read a text, and the intention of the author. In particular, she is drawn to hoaxes because scholars can use them to understand the practice of reading in a particular historical era. Usually, the assumptions that go into this practice are hidden: people are awash in the assumptions of their culture and so don't voice them. But because a hoax is meant to use those assumptions--and also then expose and talk about them--they put on display the usually tacit work that goes into writing and reading. When a scholar analyzes a hoax, then, he or she does not just bring into the situation his or her own assumptions from some later date, but can see the contemporary cultural work that went on.
Fine as far as it goes, and I suppose this would be of interest to historians of science deeply interested in the pragmatics of understanding popular culture, and really getting into the weeds; mostly, though, the theoretical surrounding seems more geared at rhetoricians.
The first full chapter--after the introduction, before the theoretical chapter--tries to set out a definition of hoaxing, in particular separating it from similar genres. The key to a hoax is that it is false--but is meant to be believed--and its revelation points to the genius of the creator.
A satire, by contrast, looks a lot like a hoax on paper, but is not meant to be believed.
A parody, by contrast--or a burlesque--calls attention to its own writing. (A hoax tries not to do this, the better to be believed.)
A fraud, by contrast, is meant to bilk someone from money, and is best not revealed: hoaxers may or may not be after money, but revelation is part of the genre.
A tall tale is very much like a hoax, indeed, can be understood as the oral form of a hoax.
Science fiction, by contrast, is understood as a kind of fiction--there is never a question of its truth.
Walsh appends to this chapter a short argument for why hoaxes had their heyday at this moment. It is not very sophisticated--James Cook's The Art of Deception is much better, though it came out later--and further on in the book she does do a bit better at drawing out the reasons, but it is clearly never her real interest, as opposed to theoretical concerns that motivate the book, and even offering a different reading of the various authors of the hoaxes. At any rate, she suggests that those more concerned with the arts and literature were worried about the growing importance of science, and hoaxing was a way of cutting it down to size--it was also a way of poking fun at science popularizers. These arguments suggest that hoaxing was in this vein was necessarily an invention of the industrial age, both after science came to have the necessary prestige, and when the popular media made hoaxing possible.
Chapter three considers the first of Walsh's three subjects: Edgar Allan Poe (in addition to Richard Adams Locke, what with his moon hoax). A great deal of the chapter is given over to biographical details, proving that Poe knew something about science and journalism, enough to pull off his hoaxes. It points out that he was particular concerned with the spectacle of science in antebellum America--where science was put on display in museums and at public lectures. There are some odd tangents--on 'pseudoscience,' for example (Walsh seems to accept the current divisions of science as truth, and deviations from them as falsehoods).
Much of the rest of the chapter is given over to collating the various responses to the hoaxes and putting these into her rhetorical theory showing how people read scientific news at the time; these categories are more clear in later chapters; here, she wanders a lot--again, there's the feel the book is a reworked dissertation, without much of the dissertation removed. I don't always understand her charts or terminology. She then moves on to interpret Poe's hoaxing as a part of his larger body of work. Here she notes that it is difficult for current readers to understand his hoaxes because they are no longer confronting them in newspapers, but in books, so the whole hoax apparatus falls away. She also notes that the tendency of some readers to see all of Poe's writing as hoaxes is misplaced, as much of his work wasn't meant to be believed, even if those writings relied on similar approaches--a newsy opening or journalistic report, for example. And, indeed, in his mysteries, the point was to eventually expose the operation of the story--while hoaxes always wanted the "storiness" to remain hidden.
She notes that for Poe's readers, corroboration of the stories, the media in which they appeared, and the authority of the reporter were what most convinced that a hoax might be real.
The next chapter moves on to consider Mark Twain in a similarly structured chapter. She notes that Twain's hoaxes borrowed from Western tall tales and shared in their democratic leveling tendency. Corroboration and authority were the two most important attributes of his successfully pulling off a hoax. In contrast to Poe's hoax--whose whole point was to commit a hoax and expose the power of science, but not offer anything else--Twain's hoaxes, she said, had a moral. (In her jargon, their was a "social mechanics of laughter.") Walsh argues that twain used his hoaxes to oppose American technocracy and colonialism. Beyond that, the reader was shown that he or she could decide their own destiny: it need not be shaped by the forces of science and technology. Laugh at those who would control you, he was saying, in Walsh's reading, and be yourself.
The next chapter considers Dan de Quille, a Westerner, miner, journalist, and one-time associate of Twain. Again, there is the same structure--biographical with a focus on how he learned science, then a review of his various hoaxes, the media environment in which they played out, the readers responses, Walsh's assessment of how the readers were operating, and the meaning of de Quille'a hoaxes within his larger body of writing. Like Twain, corroboration and authority were important in getting the hoaxes off. De Quille used his hoaxes to idolize the Western frontier. But though he wrote more hoaxes than Poe or Twain, he also kept them distinct from the rest of his hournalism, so as to not tarnish his reputation.
The final body chapter is the most interesting, from my perspective, as she gets into more of the social and cultural context of the hoaxing. In her telling, Poe was an innovator (with Locke, who may have copied him). By revealing his hoaxes, he proved the mastery of artists over science in the creation of truth. Twain inherited from Poe the criticism of sensation and undercutting of scientific authority, but put the practice to other uses--in particular, the clearing a way for individuality. De Quille is Walsh's hero, the best of the hoaxers, whose writing in the genre was the most sophisticated, anticipating objections and making the reader feel like an insider. His target was not science, strictly speaking, but Eastern interests that tried to benefit from Western labor: indeed, his hoaxes went some way to shoring up the cultural authority of science. After some more time on the utility of hoaxes for rhetoricians, Walsh concludes that hoaxes were a kind of literary machine, manufactured to exploit trust and show the instability of truth. (She then drifts through more thickets of theory, drawing out what it means to treat language as a machine.) In the end, she points to--but doe snot fully engage--the idea that truth itself was something on trial during this period, its manufacture unsure.
The concluding chapter is the weirdest, and the most dated. She skips a hundred years of history and looks at the Sokal hoax. I understand the urge: it deals with the exact same questions, over the nature of truth and the role of the social studies of science in understanding how truth is created. But it inverts the structure of everything that came before: in this case, a physicist wrote a hoax cultural studies argument, and got it published, to prove that the social studies of science and cultural studies more broadly was hogwash The problem here, of course, is in the nature of power. Walsh takes it as a given that Sokal was exposing the workings of power as much as Poe, Twain and De Quille.
But that's hogwash. Cultural studies, and the social studies of science have no where near the cachet of physics, and so whereas Poe, Twain and De Quille were punching up, Sokal was punching down. There was a lot more going on here than Walsh allows or explains, and so it is an extremely odd place to end the book. Indeed, it's a case, I think, where her interest in rhetoric ended up leading her astray. She could see the formal parallel between the events at the end of the 20th century and those in the middle of the 19th. But the social context was completely different. More attention to those surrounding points would have helped the book throughout, and certainly at the end.
Lynda Walsh is a professor of English and primarily interested in rhetoric, its theory and practice. I don't really care about that topic. What interests me is what she applies her rhetorician skills to understanding: a vogue for scientific hoaxes in the middle third of the nineteenth century.
Mostly, then, I am reading against her primary interests. Which means much of the book is of little interest to me--and, indeed, from my perspective tends to obscure the more interesting bits. The introductory chapter has the feel of a dissertation--presumably the source of this book--and the second chapter continues that feel, with a long bit on the theory underlying her book. What I took from these parts is that she is interested in hoaxing because it is neither a purely literary thing--it cannot be understood just from the words on the paper--but also connects to the manner in which people read a text, and the intention of the author. In particular, she is drawn to hoaxes because scholars can use them to understand the practice of reading in a particular historical era. Usually, the assumptions that go into this practice are hidden: people are awash in the assumptions of their culture and so don't voice them. But because a hoax is meant to use those assumptions--and also then expose and talk about them--they put on display the usually tacit work that goes into writing and reading. When a scholar analyzes a hoax, then, he or she does not just bring into the situation his or her own assumptions from some later date, but can see the contemporary cultural work that went on.
Fine as far as it goes, and I suppose this would be of interest to historians of science deeply interested in the pragmatics of understanding popular culture, and really getting into the weeds; mostly, though, the theoretical surrounding seems more geared at rhetoricians.
The first full chapter--after the introduction, before the theoretical chapter--tries to set out a definition of hoaxing, in particular separating it from similar genres. The key to a hoax is that it is false--but is meant to be believed--and its revelation points to the genius of the creator.
A satire, by contrast, looks a lot like a hoax on paper, but is not meant to be believed.
A parody, by contrast--or a burlesque--calls attention to its own writing. (A hoax tries not to do this, the better to be believed.)
A fraud, by contrast, is meant to bilk someone from money, and is best not revealed: hoaxers may or may not be after money, but revelation is part of the genre.
A tall tale is very much like a hoax, indeed, can be understood as the oral form of a hoax.
Science fiction, by contrast, is understood as a kind of fiction--there is never a question of its truth.
Walsh appends to this chapter a short argument for why hoaxes had their heyday at this moment. It is not very sophisticated--James Cook's The Art of Deception is much better, though it came out later--and further on in the book she does do a bit better at drawing out the reasons, but it is clearly never her real interest, as opposed to theoretical concerns that motivate the book, and even offering a different reading of the various authors of the hoaxes. At any rate, she suggests that those more concerned with the arts and literature were worried about the growing importance of science, and hoaxing was a way of cutting it down to size--it was also a way of poking fun at science popularizers. These arguments suggest that hoaxing was in this vein was necessarily an invention of the industrial age, both after science came to have the necessary prestige, and when the popular media made hoaxing possible.
Chapter three considers the first of Walsh's three subjects: Edgar Allan Poe (in addition to Richard Adams Locke, what with his moon hoax). A great deal of the chapter is given over to biographical details, proving that Poe knew something about science and journalism, enough to pull off his hoaxes. It points out that he was particular concerned with the spectacle of science in antebellum America--where science was put on display in museums and at public lectures. There are some odd tangents--on 'pseudoscience,' for example (Walsh seems to accept the current divisions of science as truth, and deviations from them as falsehoods).
Much of the rest of the chapter is given over to collating the various responses to the hoaxes and putting these into her rhetorical theory showing how people read scientific news at the time; these categories are more clear in later chapters; here, she wanders a lot--again, there's the feel the book is a reworked dissertation, without much of the dissertation removed. I don't always understand her charts or terminology. She then moves on to interpret Poe's hoaxing as a part of his larger body of work. Here she notes that it is difficult for current readers to understand his hoaxes because they are no longer confronting them in newspapers, but in books, so the whole hoax apparatus falls away. She also notes that the tendency of some readers to see all of Poe's writing as hoaxes is misplaced, as much of his work wasn't meant to be believed, even if those writings relied on similar approaches--a newsy opening or journalistic report, for example. And, indeed, in his mysteries, the point was to eventually expose the operation of the story--while hoaxes always wanted the "storiness" to remain hidden.
She notes that for Poe's readers, corroboration of the stories, the media in which they appeared, and the authority of the reporter were what most convinced that a hoax might be real.
The next chapter moves on to consider Mark Twain in a similarly structured chapter. She notes that Twain's hoaxes borrowed from Western tall tales and shared in their democratic leveling tendency. Corroboration and authority were the two most important attributes of his successfully pulling off a hoax. In contrast to Poe's hoax--whose whole point was to commit a hoax and expose the power of science, but not offer anything else--Twain's hoaxes, she said, had a moral. (In her jargon, their was a "social mechanics of laughter.") Walsh argues that twain used his hoaxes to oppose American technocracy and colonialism. Beyond that, the reader was shown that he or she could decide their own destiny: it need not be shaped by the forces of science and technology. Laugh at those who would control you, he was saying, in Walsh's reading, and be yourself.
The next chapter considers Dan de Quille, a Westerner, miner, journalist, and one-time associate of Twain. Again, there is the same structure--biographical with a focus on how he learned science, then a review of his various hoaxes, the media environment in which they played out, the readers responses, Walsh's assessment of how the readers were operating, and the meaning of de Quille'a hoaxes within his larger body of writing. Like Twain, corroboration and authority were important in getting the hoaxes off. De Quille used his hoaxes to idolize the Western frontier. But though he wrote more hoaxes than Poe or Twain, he also kept them distinct from the rest of his hournalism, so as to not tarnish his reputation.
The final body chapter is the most interesting, from my perspective, as she gets into more of the social and cultural context of the hoaxing. In her telling, Poe was an innovator (with Locke, who may have copied him). By revealing his hoaxes, he proved the mastery of artists over science in the creation of truth. Twain inherited from Poe the criticism of sensation and undercutting of scientific authority, but put the practice to other uses--in particular, the clearing a way for individuality. De Quille is Walsh's hero, the best of the hoaxers, whose writing in the genre was the most sophisticated, anticipating objections and making the reader feel like an insider. His target was not science, strictly speaking, but Eastern interests that tried to benefit from Western labor: indeed, his hoaxes went some way to shoring up the cultural authority of science. After some more time on the utility of hoaxes for rhetoricians, Walsh concludes that hoaxes were a kind of literary machine, manufactured to exploit trust and show the instability of truth. (She then drifts through more thickets of theory, drawing out what it means to treat language as a machine.) In the end, she points to--but doe snot fully engage--the idea that truth itself was something on trial during this period, its manufacture unsure.
The concluding chapter is the weirdest, and the most dated. She skips a hundred years of history and looks at the Sokal hoax. I understand the urge: it deals with the exact same questions, over the nature of truth and the role of the social studies of science in understanding how truth is created. But it inverts the structure of everything that came before: in this case, a physicist wrote a hoax cultural studies argument, and got it published, to prove that the social studies of science and cultural studies more broadly was hogwash The problem here, of course, is in the nature of power. Walsh takes it as a given that Sokal was exposing the workings of power as much as Poe, Twain and De Quille.
But that's hogwash. Cultural studies, and the social studies of science have no where near the cachet of physics, and so whereas Poe, Twain and De Quille were punching up, Sokal was punching down. There was a lot more going on here than Walsh allows or explains, and so it is an extremely odd place to end the book. Indeed, it's a case, I think, where her interest in rhetoric ended up leading her astray. She could see the formal parallel between the events at the end of the 20th century and those in the middle of the 19th. But the social context was completely different. More attention to those surrounding points would have helped the book throughout, and certainly at the end.
February 21, 2023
A fascinating introduction to a topic I’d never considered systematically before.
March 26, 2008
This book is well-researched, insightful, measured, and clear. Okay, some of the linguistics bits stumped me, but Walsh does explain them -- I just didn't bother reading the technical explanation closely because I don't need to understand it and I'm a strategic reader these days.
In general, this is an excellent scholarly examination of science-related hoaxes.
In general, this is an excellent scholarly examination of science-related hoaxes.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews