Halley Turns Republican: How the Portuguese Press Presented the 1910 Return of Halley's Comet

Abstract

1. INTRODUCTIONOnly recently has the history of science community begun to pay attention to the role of mass media in communicating science and technology to non-specialized audiences, and specifically to the role of the daily press in such an endeavour.' Interestingly, science communicated in newspapers situated in peripheral countries played a central role in producing such a historical shift.2 Our own association with this topic emerged within the context of discussions of the specificities of popularization of science in the European periphery, centred on historiographie reappraisals.3In peripheral countries with high illiteracy rates such as Portugal, the daily press, much more than periodicals,4 is able to reach out to the masses, notably through reading aloud, and therefore emerges as a particularly suggestive source for unraveling the public images of science and technology and of their role in society. It further enables the historian to identify those instances in which science news items become instances of popularization.5Popularization of astronomy has been a privileged research sub-field of popularization of science for historians of science in general as well as for those working on topics on the European periphery. Singular events such as eclipses, in particular, have been a focus of attention in ascertaining their role as popularization topics and ingredients of popular culture. The return of Halley's Comet in 1910 is especially suited to assess the role played by scientific controversies in communicating science to lay audiences through the press.6Based on a comprehensive survey of all news on the return of Halley's Comet, in 1910 - derived from a database of scientific news in Portuguese newspapers, between 1900 and 19267 - as seen by three daily generalist newspapers (Diario de Noticias, Comercio do Porto and Diario dos Azores),8 we offer a comparative assessment of the press coverage of Halley's passage, taken both as a scientific and a media event, in different local settings, as well as of the way politics was imbibed in the news. Newspapers were chosen on the basis of wide circulation, broad ideological scope and different geographical locations. Although similarities among all newspapers may be associated with international trends and the perceived role of foreign popularizes such as Camille Rammarion, the relative importance of national, regional or local features in shaping different appropriations of Halley's passage is particularly clear in the reports of journalists, in the news written by Portuguese scientists or in the participation of the public, a quite unexpected phenomenon in view of the high illiteracy of the Portuguese population, especially in rural areas. Urban and suburban regions along the Portuguese coast fared much better, where the bourgeoisie cultivated reading habits, especially newspapers.Newspapers appear to be privileged media for the examination of how science and technology are presented to the public in different local settings, revealing how the main political, social and cultural features of a period influence the public discourse about science and technology, which seems particularly striking in the Portuguese case, as it coincided with a major political shift, the transition from the monarchy to the republic. By using the daily press to engage in popularization of science, scientists partook of the ideal of the republican movement whose positivistic orientation presented science as an antidote to religion and superstition, and as a means to educate the people and modernize the country. In this context, sensationalist news was taken as a pretext to introduce the critical views of Portuguese scientists who were committed to conveying rational interpretations of natural phenomena, in this way discrediting the controversies fuelled by well-known foreign popularizers and journalists. The return of Halley's Comet in 1910 is especially suited to assess the role played by scientific controversies in communicating science to lay audiences through the press. …