Substantia. An International Journal of the History of Chemistry 4(2): 151-154, 2020 Firenze University Press www.fupress.com/substantia ISSN 2532-3997 (online) | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-923 Citation: A. Di Meo (2020) Communi- cating Science: a Modern Event. Sub- stantia 4(2): 151-154. doi: 10.13128/ Substantia-923 Received: Nov 23, 2019 Revised: Apr 26, 2020 Just Accepted Online: Apr 28, 2020 Published: Sep 12, 2020 Copyright: © 2020 A. Di Meo. This is an open access, peer-reviewed article published by Firenze University Press (http://www.fupress.com/substantia) and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distri- bution, and reproduction in any medi- um, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All rel- evant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Competing Interests: The Author(s) declare(s) no conflict of interest. Historical Article Communicating Science: a Modern Event Antonio Di Meo Sapienza University, Rome, Italy E-mail: dimeoantonio17@gmail.com Abstract. Science is by its very nature an intersubjective, public, collaborative and democratic (at least in principle) enterprise. The modern scholar of nature, in fact, cannot but communicate first of all to his/her colleagues the results of his/her research, since, in the final analysis, science is a socially shared and socially validated corpus of knowledge. The results of research must therefore be made public but non only among the specialists. The modern way of communicating science has triggered a progres- sively accelerating circulation of documents (rather than researchers), reversing a more than secular trend in which scholars reached the places where knowledge was depos- ited and archived. The modern databases, that host books, newspaper and periodi- cals like actual libraries and are accessible online, represent the last expression of this inverted mobility between documents and consultants. Keywords: communication, modern science, ethics of research, progress, academies, scientific press, scientific entertainment. The emphasis that is generally put in modern science on the problem of communication has a very profound raison d’ être: compared to many other forms of knowledge, science is by its very nature an intersubjective, public, collaborative and democratic (at least in principle) enterprise. The modern scholar of nature, in fact, cannot but communicate first of all to his col- leagues the results of his research, since, in the final analysis, science is a socially shared and socially validated corpus of knowledge. Only the work which is actually understood by other scientists and used hic et nunc counts for the progress of science. The results of research must therefore be made public. Whatever scientists think or say individually, their findings cannot be considered as belonging to scientific knowledge until they have been report- ed and recorded on a permanent basis. This imperative has been (and is) often motivated as a moral obligation; as a service rendered to humanity in general, but it has a foundation in the very structure of the functioning of modern science, which has been born and developed since the Late Renaissance in opposition to an elitist tradi- tion of knowledge and its transmission. Within this tradition, the language – often allegorical, metaphorical and analogical – served rather to conceal the contents of knowledge reached from the public of the uninitiated than to reveal them, in order to delimit its acquisition to restricted and selected cir- http://www.fupress.com/substantia http://www.fupress.com/substantia mailto:dimeoantonio17@gmail.com 152 Antonio Di Meo cles of interlocutors, to the ‘elected’, precisely. The very idea of progress, which, as is well known, is strongly linked to the beginnings and developments of modern science, since it implies a transgenerational relationship, refers to the possibility of communicating over time that only appropriate language can allow, which must use concrete means capable of making such transmission possible. But this implies in advance that the very idea of translating and transmitting one’s own thought in written form and accessible to most people is considered positive and valued. After the first phase of the correspondence in terms of private contacts, even coordinated as in the case of Marin Mersenne and its “cenacolo” of the so called Academia Parisiensis at the beginning of seventeenth century, from the sixteenth century the scientific com- munication developed through networks of intellec- tual and curious individuals. These collectives were ini- tially unformal, like the Gresham College, the Bureau d’adresses, l’Académie de Montmor and so on, but they were soon (1657-1666) replaced by real scientific Acad- emies as the Accademia dei Lincei, the Académie Roy- ale des Sciences, the Royal Society of London and all the other ones that were progressively constituted between ‘700 and today in Europe, North America and the rest of the world. These new institutions – either spontaneous or under the patronage of erudite men – proliferated in the Modern Era, not only in the scientific fields, but also in the literary and artistic ones. Besides the statutes that regulated the internal life and the admissions, some academies established their own press where papers discussed in specific sessions or sent by single scientists could be periodically printed. Academic proceedings were not the only way of publica- tion; there were also books and an increasing number of journals and magazines, confirming that press played a fundamental role in the development of science and cul- tural dissemination. Obviously, the transmission of memory in a long- term perspective needs a supporting material which is able to guarantee the circulation of knowledge from past to future. In this case the support must ensure almost unlimited reproducibility of the document, in order to make the necessary material available - cheap- ly and easily - for all those engaged in research activi- ties or curious about the outcomes. The modern way of communicating science, therefore, has triggered a pro- gressively accelerating circulation of documents (rather than researchers), reversing a more than secular trend in which scholars reached the places where knowledge was deposited and archived. The modern databases, that host books, newspa- per and periodicals like actual libraries and are accessi- ble online, represent the last expression of this inverted mobility between documents and consultants. But, more important, they allow a relevant shortening of the time needed for sharing knowledge. Since the birth of the first Academies, scientific communication has been substan- tially institutional, anticipating the production of knowl- edges, that remained a personal and private activity, sec- ondary to that one by which researchers got the means for their subsistence till the end of 19th century. But writing in itself is not enough: the style must be clear and able to make the contents of the work compre- hensible. To many “moderns”, writing in an obscure way was equivalent not to write at all! The use of a written language which is understandable by the largest number of people is fundamental to allow the comprehension of a text. This need had been satisfied for many centuries by the use of Latin language. For this reason, intellectuals and thinkers faced a contradiction between the universal comprehension of science versus the more democratic access to it by the use of local and national idioms which are more easily understood by citizens. The modern science greatly contributed (albeit dif- ferently from the humanistic disciplines) to the crisis of Latin as universal language. This crisis originated from social, political and religious causes, which are deep- ly intertwined; thus, it is very difficult to analyse them separately. The success of National languages can be ascribed to the increasing interest in Science by common citizens from the emerging social classes. Knowledge was no longer a privilege of erudite people and nobil- ity: Science was considered “useful” and lots of people looked at it as a mean of social growth. For example, in the introduction to the Italian edi- tion of the “Cours de Chymie” by Nicolas Lèmery (1675), it was possible to read that barbers and apothecaries would have considered this treatise so useful as to con- sult it with the same frequency as the priests read their breviaries. In this context it is also worth mentioning Galileo Galilei’s works, that represent one of the most excellent expression of the Italian language of 17th cen- tury, able to maintain its virtuosity till today. Between the end of 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century an ever-widening “public sphere” of sci- ence and technology was established outside academies, and scientific experimentation became a common prac- tice in the institutions dedicated to teaching. These labs became usual rendezvous for people with different back- grounds and culture, and hosted discussions about the nature of philosophy, new techniques and discoveries. 153Communicating Science: a Modern Event A particularly rich audience meet in anomalous plac- es like coffee rooms, hotels, guest houses, especially in England in the period ’700-’800. Science became a very popular subject for public initiatives: international speak- ers started moving across European countries showing instruments, experiments and practical demonstrations during their conferences. Successively the first interna- tional exhibitions were established; here science, tech- nology and industry were celebrated all together as the three main aspects of the same reality and recognized as the key actors for the economic development and the improvement of the social life quality. An explicative, albeit overlooked episode of the capillary penetration of science into society is the diffusion of agricultural educa- tion in rural areas (agriculture represented the main eco- nomic activity until the end of 20th century). The nobil- ity, especially in France, Germany and England, was totally fascinated by this new tendency, producing a lot of informative printed material and giving life to a true propaganda in favour of science applied to agriculture, as shown in many literary works of that time. Science became also a source of playful and ‘won- derful’ entertainment: initially restricted to the aristo- cratic and bourgeois elites, it progressively propagates to all social classes. This was the origin of the physique amusante, a definition given by the French chemist Jean- Sébastien-Eugène Julia de Fontenelle (1790-1842) in his divulgation work Manuel de physique amusante, which was published in Paris in 1826. This book is an example of a particular literary genre with the explicit popular aim of entertaining and amusing. However, in this kind of works there was a tendency to illustrate a certain law or principle behind some surprising phenomenon rather than demonstrat- ing or explaining the causes, making these presentations engaging for the general public. Between the 18th and 19th centuries in the most enlightened courts, as well as in noble houses, real scien- tific, educational or entertainment evenings took place, and the protagonist of the event was the most varied sci- entific instrumentation: electrostatic, mechanical, mag- netic and electromagnetic, or even chemical and pneu- matic. During these soirees the so-called ‘electrifying physicists’ showed thrilling experiments with the ‘electric fire’ (or ‘electric virtue’), which was considered by the new natural philosophers – as well as by actors, bark- ers and charlatans – the fluid responsible for the most varied phenomena, and capable of great and wonder- ful games, especially since it was discovered “that ladies generally electrify more easily than men and young women better than the old ones”. This ‘fire’ was also con- sidered by some doctors (professional and not) as a vital fluid, and a possible source of new and extraordinary therapeutic methods, like a sort of universal panacea. Electrical phenomena were particularly suitable for the theatricalisation of science, a very popular trend since the beginning of 18th century, especially in Great Brit- ain. But scientific divulgation, even in an ‘entertaining’ or accessible way, did not involve only minor characters: the greatest disseminator of Newton’s ideas in France was Voltaire with his philosophical pamphlets, or Jean d’Alembert in the pages of the Encyclopédie. The salon of Emilie du Chatelet (1706-1749), a scien- tist and philosopher in the circle of Voltaire, at the castle of Cirey, was a center of divulgation of Newtonianism in the European continent. Regarding chemistry, Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was brilliant propagandist, together with Paul-Henry Thiry d’Holbach (1723-1789), who, in the mid-eighteenth century, translated into French (i.e. the language of science of the time) the works of the physician and chemist Georg Ernst Stahl (1660-1734), the founder of the phlogiston theory. Very few works are capable of explaining to a wide audience the theory of chemical affinity: excellent examples are the first chap- ters of Wolfgang Goethe’s Elective Affinities (1809) (1749- 1832) or, nowadays, Primo Levi’s Periodic System (1919- 1987). The broadening of the ‘audience’ interested in science reached both young gentlemen and – exception- ally – women: in particular works explicitly dedicated to women were composed, usually in the form of a salon or gallant dialogues, which gave life to a specific literary genre. Some examples of these writings ‘for ladies’ were the Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686) by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) who had numerous translations into Italian (1711, 1744, 1765, 1831, etc.), followed in Italy by the works Il newtonianismo per le dame, ovvero dialoghi sopra la luce, i colori, e l’attrazione (1737) by the Venetian polygraph Francesco Algar- otti (1712-1774) and La chimica per le donne (1796) by the Jacobin Giuseppe Compagnoni (1754-1833). Many newly formed institutions, such as the Royal Institution (1799) in London, directed by the chemist Humphry Davy (1778-1829) and then by the physicist and chemist Michel Faraday (1791-1867), organized popular confer- ences on scientific subjects in the nineteenth century. These symposia became very popular, exciting events, just as concerts and theatrical performances (the Christ- mas lectures, inaugurated by Faraday in 1826, were dedi- cated to young people). The current return of the amusante way of science spectacularization for the general public, through web- sites, television and radio broadcasts, magazines, sci- ence festivals, interactive science centers, ‘science cafes’, 154 Antonio Di Meo ‘scientific theatre’, and so on, have very prestigious prec- edents, in an era of great enthusiasm for a new form of knowledge which has proved to be the foundation of our current civilization. REFERENCES: Herbert Butterfield, Le origini della scienza moderna, Bologna, il Mulino, 1998. Paolo Rossi, I filosofi e le macchine: 1400-1700, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1962. Id., La scienza e la filosofia dei moderni: aspetti della riv- oluzione scientifica, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1989 Id., La nascita della scienza moderna in Europa, Roma, Laterza, 1997. AA. VV., Storia della scienza, Treccani, Istituto della Enci- clopedia Italiana, Roma, 2001-2008, volumi V, VI, VII. 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