Abstract
* This work was carried out while the author was at the University of Keele, supported by a Leverhulme Visiting Fellow in the History of Science. I For general surveys of scientific societies see Robert E. Schofield, 'Histories of Scientific Societies: Needs and Opportunities for Research', History of Science, 2 (1963), 70-83, and Douglas McKie, 'Scientific Societies to the End of the Eighteenth Century', in Allan H. Ferguson (ed.), Natural Philosophy through the Eighteenth Century (London, 1948), I33-43. Recent studies of British provincial scientific societies include the following: Robert E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham (Oxford, I963); Eric Robinson, 'The Derby Philosophical Society', Annals of Science, 9 (1953), 359-67; Arnold W. Thackray, 'Medicine, Manufacturers and Manchester Men: The Origins of a Scientific Society', Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of the History of Science (Moscow, I971) (in press); A. D. Orange, 'The British Association for the Advancement of Science: The Provincial Background', Science Studies, 1 (I 9 7 ), 3 I 5-29 (deals with the Yorkshire Philosophical Society); Steven A. Shapin, The Royal Society of Edinburgh: A Study of the Social Context of Hanoverian Science (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1970) (chs. ii-iv deal with the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, 1737-82; later sections with the Royal Society into which it was subsumed in 1783). Lists of British provincial societies may be found in A. Hume, The Learned Societies and Printing Clubs of the United Kingdom (London, I847) and J. W. Hudson, The History of Adult Education (London, I85I; rep.r. London, I969), 237-38. References to dozens of such societies are interspersed throughout A. E. Musson and Eric Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester/Toronto, i969).
Highlights
The Royal Society of Edinburgh: A Study of the Social Context of Hanoverian Science (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1970)
The provincial scientific societies were a cultural phenomenon of the first importance and it is well worth understanding how they came into being, responded to the cultural requirements of the classes which sustained them, prospered for a time, and declined
I shall attempt to show that science was an integral part of a class self-image and, through a detailed examination of one short-lived scientific society, I hope to illustrate some of the cultural uses of science throughout provincial Britain in the early nineteenth century
Summary
The study and propagation of scientific knowledge as the praise of God, as practically useful knowledge, as the cultural self-expression of a progressive industrial class, as an anodyne for temptation and turbulence-all these themes may be observed in the career of the Pottery Philosophical Society.
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