Lyons, Sherrie Lynne: Species, Serpents, Spirits, and Skulls: Science at the Margins in the Victorian Age

Abstract

Sherrie Lyons is Assistant Professor at the Center for Distance Learning of Empire State College, State University of New York and the author of Thomas Henry Huxley: The Evolution of a Scientist. How to distinguish science from pseudoscience is an important question that continues to challenge academics and the lay public and this book provides us with an interesting look at examples of ‘‘science at the margins’’ from the nineteenth century. Lyons notes in the Preface: ‘‘...most people are woefully ignorant of what distinguishes science from other types of knowledge and they lack any sense of the historical development of scientific ideas.’’ She goes onto say: ‘‘Often yesterday’s heresy is today’s science (and conversely today’s pseudoscience is yesterday’s science).’’ (p. xi) The examples of pseudoscience, or ‘‘marginal’’ science using the term she prefers, that Lyons uses are sea serpents, spiritualism, and phrenology, and these are compared with Darwin’s theory of evolution of species. Each of the three marginal science topics attracted widespread attention among the lay public and even among some scientists, but they remained at the margins of scientific respectability, unlike evolutionary theory which eventually became the unifying theory for all of biology. In just over 200 pages the reader is presented with historical facts from the Victorian Age of the nineteenth century and arguments that are used to show the complex relationship between science and society. Lyons suggests the Victorian period should be called the age of ‘‘contradictions’’ rather than the age of science because so many people in Victorian society were convinced of the reality of spiritual phenomena while at the same time hoping that science would transform society into a better place. Mixing the supernatural world of spirits with the material world of science was apparently quite easy for most lay people and some scientists as well. We see this in the modern age in the U.S. where a large majority of people say they respect and value science while at the same time claiming belief in the supernatural world of religion.