Science and the Past ed. by Sheridan Bowman

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 413 traces the professionalization of the sciences as it affected, and was affected by, the establishment and growth of early museums. The professionalization of the sciences is central to Orosz’s argument as it becomes the barometer for understanding the tension between pop­ ular education and elite scholarship. The first museums after the revolution organized around a scientific theme to gain legitimacy as public institutions of education and announce the pride of a free nation. During the subsequent periods discussed, the sciences were used as bastions against the masses, or mediums to outreach to the public. Orosz’s vast use of primary sources and tireless discussion of individuals offer historians of science and technology a refreshing view of the shift from amateurism to professionalism in the sciences during the first half of the 19th century. Although the importance of the book is not diminished, Curators and Culture suffers from several lapses of analysis. Orosz’s periodiza­ tion is too simplistic and glosses over the subtleties of cultural change and the effects of that change on museums. His conclusion that by 1870 the form of the modern museum was in place seems precocious. As scholars such as Arthur Molella and Neil Harris have shown, the modern, cosmopolitan museum was far from complete in 1870. The conclusion is faulty because of Orosz’s preoccupation with the tension between popular education and scientific research. His own evidence seems to support a contradictory argument that popular education and research did not gain predominance over one another at different periods of time but were coexistent with one another at all times. Finally, Orosz’s refutation of the democratic criticism and the professional criticism is not completely convincing. Indeed, his evi­ dence shows that early museums deserve these derogatory labels as much as they should he studied as serious institutions. This kind of complex analysis is what is missing in Curators and Culture. Neverthe­ less, Orosz has written an important book that will challenge histori­ ans of American museums to look more carefully at early institutions, their proprietors, and the culture that created them. Michael FitzGibbon Mr. FitzGibbon is a doctoral candidate in the Social Policy, History and Museum Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University. Science and the Past. Edited by Sheridan Bowman. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Pp. 192; illustrations, glossary, references, index. $40.00. The title of this book is at once too broad and too narrow, but an attempt to repair it would lead to a 19th-century-style subtitle on the order of “Being an account of the application of science and technol­ 414 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE ogy to the analysis, conservation, and management of the collections in the British Museum, with especial reference to the provenance, production, and cultural context of sundry classes of artifact.” Those who have enjoyed Cyril Stanley Smith’s essays will find Science and the Past equally evocative, though the book’s broader focus includes ceramics and glass in addition to metal objects and metallurgy. The essays are of consistently high quality and go beyond the straightfor­ ward description of methods and results to comment and speculate about the artifacts and artisans themselves. Copious, pertinent, and well-labeled black-and-white illustrations complement the text, and a group of color plates further enhances both the educational and aesthetic content. An informative glossary provides clear, concise descriptions of the analytical tools, from atomic absorption spectro­ photometry to X-ray radiography. Each essay closes with suggestions for further reading and a full scholarly apparatus of references. Readers of this journal will be struck by the fact that the questions asked by the British Museum’s Department of Scientific Research are those of interest to historians of technology: How were these things made? Where did the materials come from? Who were the artificers, and what were their motives? What was their place, and the place of their product, in the fabric of their societies? That these questions are asked in the context of art history reminds us of the close relationship between art and technology, so evident in much 20th-century work and here once again shown to extend seamlessly into...