Strange Science: Investigating the Limits of Knowledge in the Victorian Age

by Lara Karpenko, Shalyn Rae Claggett

The essays in Strange Science examine marginal, fringe, and unconventional forms of scientific inquiry, as well as their cultural representations, in the Victorian period. Although now relegated to the category of the pseudoscientific, fields like mesmerism and psychical research captured the imagination of the Victorian public. Conversely, many branches of science now viewed as uncontroversial, such as physics and botany, were often associated with unorthodox methods of inquiry. Whether ultimately incorporated into mainstream scientific thought or categorized by 21st century historians as pseudo- or even anti-scientific, these sciences generated conversation, enthusiasm, and controversy within Victorian society.
 

To date, scholarship addressing Victorian pseudoscience tends to focus either on a particular popular science within its social context or on how mainstream scientific practice distinguished itself from more contested forms. Strange Science takes a different approach by placing a range of sciences in conversation with one another and examining the similar unconventional methods of inquiry adopted by both now-established scientific fields and their marginalized counterparts during the Victorian period. In doing so, Strange Science reveals the degree to which scientific discourse of this period was radically speculative, frequently attempting to challenge or extend the apparent boundaries of the natural world. This interdisciplinary collection will appeal to scholars in the fields of Victorian literature, cultural studies, the history of the body, and the history of science.

 

Genres: History, Science

312 pages, Hardcover

Published December 20, 2016

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone with a science background approaching a book about science from any angle by a group of academics from English departments will be doing so with a certain trepidation, conscious of the "science wars" that sprang from postmodernism and suspicious that there are still some lingering remains of that mindset.

Well, there's good news and bad news, but mostly good. Most of the essays in this volume are free of anti-science bias or relativism about truth. The glaring exception is the essay on Annie Besant's "Occult Chemistry". The existence of sexism in science - still an issue 150 years later - and the establishment's rejection of Besant due to her radical ideas do not validate clairvoyance as a way of investigating atomic structure or put it on the same footing as actual science. It leads to a weak piece on what could actually have been an interesting topic. Sadly, one of the stronger pieces, on a book called "The Unseen Universe" also feels the need to nod towards this kind of relativism at the end.

Beyond this, it's invetitably a mixed bag. Many of the essays are as much, or more, about literature than about science or even fringe/pseudo science. There is a good piece on The Picture of Dorian Gray, for example, that is only vaguely connected to science, strange or otherwise. An essay on monstrous plants in fiction touches on The Willows and The War of the Worlds but disappointingly has little to say about them.

However, the bulk of the book is worthwhile and explores byways of Victorian science such as Visible Speech about which I previously knew nothing. Taken as a whole, it does also build a picture of the cultural landscape surrounding science in the 19th century, how science influenced popular culture and, most surprising, the ongoing drawing of the boundaries of what actually counted as science.