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‘Instinct’ and Douglas Spalding: A Case Study ‘Instinct’ and Douglas Spalding: A Case Study
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The Fortnightly Review and the Nineteenth Century The Fortnightly Review and the Nineteenth Century
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The Review of Reviews The Review of Reviews
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The Argosy and Temple Bar The Argosy and Temple Bar
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Acknowledgements Acknowledgements
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Select Bibliography Select Bibliography
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22 Science and Periodicals: Animal Instinct and Whispering Machines
Get accessSally Shuttleworth is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. She was co-director of the Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project which produced an index to the science content of a range of periodicals (http://www.sciper.org/), and three books in the area. She has published extensively on Victorian literature and science. Her most recent work is The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science and Medicine, 1840-1900 (Oxford University Press, 2010).
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Published:09 July 2015
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Abstract
Periodicals offer a wonderful guide to the Victorian age, and to the ways in which science entered into the general culture of the time. This study considers a range of different kinds of periodicals, and the diverse ways in which they engaged with contemporary science. Although evolutionary theory was obviously a significant presence, it formed only one part of a complex picture. In the literary-oriented periodicals, for example, we find particular emphasis placed on the ways in which scientific thinking appeared to intersect with the interests of fiction and poetry, whether in theories of selfhood or personal responsibility, or the relations between science and religion. There was also, more generally, a fascination with new inventions, and the possibilities opened up by new technologies, such as the ingenious suggestion for a ‘whispering machine’. Periodicals offer an intricate picture of a society grappling with rapid social and cultural change, charged with the immediacy which comes from their serial and time-bound nature. In their integration of cutting-edge science with the latest fiction or social commentary they established a model we could do well to emulate.
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