Doctoral Dissertation Research

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

This award is for a doctoral dissertation research improvement grant to support research for a dissertation project, On the Origin of Vestiges: Science, Pseudo-Science, and Society in Early Victorian Britain. It will focus on how Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and its anonymous author, publisher Robert Chambers, reveal the complex and often conflictual relationship between science and society in early Victorian Britain. Vestiges proposed the first comprehensive theory of universal development, including the transmutation of species, to be published in English. Vestiges was very widely read by both the general public and many in positions of cultural and political authority. Its integrated theory of material development and deistic design derived from many sources that have yet to be fully revealed. This dissertation will seek to identify and clarify the components (intellectual, philosophical, theological, personal, sociological, and political) from which Chambers fashioned Vestiges, in order to highlight issues of cultural and epistemic status, display the early stages of border disputes between science and religion in Britain, and reveal surprising political affiliations and influences among people and ideas normally associated with liberal reform. In addition, because Vestiges occupied a particularly precarious position as a scientific work, this dissertation will reveal crucial but as yet ill-defined distinctions between science and non-science at a time when such distinctions were becoming especially consequential. Many of these issues still resonate today in conflicts between claims accepted by scientific experts and the values and ideas of certain religious and cultural groups. A deeper understanding of the historical components of these issues will help scientists, cultural leaders, teachers, and policy-makers develop more effective strategies for addressing and ameliorating some of the friction resulting from engagements between conflicting views about the nature and status of scientific knowledge.