" Suggestive Books": the Role of the Writings of Mary Somerville in Science and Gender History

• Autores: Ruth Watts
• Localización: Paedagogica Historica: International journal of the history of education, ISSN 0030-9230, Vol. 38, Nº. 1, 2002 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Books and education: 500 years of reading and learning), págs. 163-186
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In 1874 the eminent Scottish scientist, James Clerk Maxwell, said of Mary Somerville's On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences that it was one of those �suggestive books� which communicate intelligibly the �guiding ideas� already in the minds of �men of science� and so lead the latter to further discoveries. 1 1 Elizabeth Patterson, � Mary Somerville�, British Journal for the History of Science, IV (1968/1969), p. 322. View all notes Mary Somerville's three main publications, all of them updated and reedited a number of times, had a significant impact upon the scientific world of Britain in the nineteenth century. She was seen and, indeed, saw herself, as an expert expositor of science rather than a scientist in her own right. Unusually for a woman, however, she wrote for adults - students and practitioners of science - not children. This paper will explore how influential her scientific writings were in the nineteenth-century, how and why they came to be written,for whom they were intended and what were the reactions to their publication. This case study will be used as an exemplar of how far, as authors of influential books, women could find a niche in science education or the academic world, or even within the changing cultural construct of �science� itself