This paper looks at phrenological charts as mediators of scientific knowledge to individual clients who used them as a means of self-assessment. Phrenologists propagated the idea that the human mind could be categorized into different mental faculties, with each particular faculty represented in a different area of the brain and by bumps on the head. In the US and the UK popular phrenologists examined individual clients for a fee. Drawing on a collection of phrenological charts completed for individual clients, this (...) paper shows how charts aspired to convey new ideals of selfhood by using the authority of science in tailor-made certificates, and by teaching clients some of the basic practices of that science. Hitherto historians studying phrenology have focused mainly on the attraction of the content of phrenological knowledge for the wider public, but in this paper I show how the charts enabled clients to participate actively in creating knowledge of their own bodies and selves. (shrink)

An ethnographic or ethnomethodological turn in the history of the human sciences has been a Holy Grail at least since Cooter and Pumphrey called for it in 1994, but it has been little realized in practice. This article sketches out some ways to explore the reception, use and/or co-production of scientific knowledge using material generated by mediators such as mass-market paperbacks, radio, TV and especially newspapers. It then presents some preliminary findings, tracing the prevalence and, to a lesser extent, use (...) of selected social-science concepts in the USA and the UK from the 1930s to the 1970s. (shrink)

Open Court began publishingThe Monistin 1890 as a journal“devotedto the philosophy of science”that regularly included mathematics. The audiencewas understood to be“cultured people who have not a technical mathematicaltraining”but nevertheless“have a mathematical penchant.”With these constraints,the mathematical content varied from recreations to logical foundations, but every-one had something to say about non-Euclidean geometry, in debates that rangedfrom psychology to semantics. The focus in this essay is on the contested value ofmathematical expertise in legitimating what should be considered as mathematics.While some mathematicians urgedThe (...) Monistto uphold disciplinary standards ofgeometrical reasoning, authors opposed tonon-Euclidean geometry aligned theirreasoning with practical applications, universal know-how, and nonhierarchicaldemocracy. As one contributorinquired,“How isthe professional expert betterfit-ted to see more lucidly in dealing with the elements of geometry than any otherperson of good geometric faculty?”. (shrink)