Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

Reader's review
This is a analysis of the 'British Association for the Advancement of Science' that was formed in 1831. Covers the cultural context, the announced goals, the men involved and their background, and the promotion of science (particularly their 'science') as the knowledge needed to save the world. Their goal was to create a new locus of authority, the clerisy, to replace the lost authority of theology and the clergy. They succeeded.

In 1837 the Marquis of Northampton proclaimed about the BAAS 'It taught but one great lesson - a lesson bequeathed to us as a legacy by the Author of our faith, 'Love one another'. (9) Thus is clearly a incursion into theology by a new 'scientific' institution. It proclaimed "it's benign, nonpolitical, and nonsectarian commitment to discovered and universal truth." (12) This was the age old claim of theology.

Coleridge wrote in 1830 "The clerisy of the nation, or national church, in its primary acceptation and original intention comprehended the learned of all the denominations; the sages and professors of the law and jurisprudence; of medicine and physiology; of music; of military and civil architecture; of the physical sciences; with the mathematical as the common organ of the preceding." (17) This was a call for a new form of religious belief and practice.

To Coleridge the clerisy was a permanent, learned class or order, a sort of national church of intellect. He conceived of it as composed of two categories: "A certain smaller number were to remain at the fountain of the humanities, cultivating and enlarging the knowledge already possessd, and watching over the interests of the physical and moral science; being, likewise, the instructors of such as constituted, or were to constitute, the remaining more numerous classes of the order. This latter and far more numerous body were to be distributed throughout the country, so as not to leave even the smallest intregal part or division without a resident guide, guardian, and instructor." (20) Seems prophetic.

Other groups were attempting to aquire authority. "One such group consisted of John Henry Newman and his friends who formed Oxford or Tractarian Movement. It's strong clerical base and it's great moral, theological, and intellectual ambitions, the oxford movement believed it was entitled to leadership of the nation. Quite different in character, but equal in ambition was a group loosely associated with University College, London. Ideas of Jeremy Bentham in the later formulations of James and John Stuart Mill made the utilitarians an important phalanx and one plainly saw itself as the true expression of the intellectual and moral requirements of the age."(21) Tractarians are forgotten. Utilitarianism is a major force in current political thought.

Morrell explains that these men served in many other significant groups. "Not surprisingly, the gentleman of science saw themselves not as spokesmen for a narrow interest, or even for the whole scientific clerisy or a wider intelligentsia, but simply as the anointed interpreters of God's truth about the natural, and hence the moral, world." (29) Hubris that continues.

"The demonstration that science was a neutral court of appeal, a wellspring of authority and power, an objective and impersonal means to good and desirable ends, a tangible object of public pride, and an instrument of the common weal had many utilities for the supporters of the British association. To the politician and theologian science became a means of bolstering those of their claims which could be understood in terms of the natural or ordained place of man. To the manufacturer and engineer, science became the rhetorical guarantor of the rightness of their chosen courses. . . was soon translated into science as a lobby of government; science as an argument for prestige and position; science as a means of career enhancement; science as a subject of grants, reports, and research programs; and science as a socially irreproachable means of ego aggrandizement." (33) Science became all things to all people.

The term 'scientist' was coined in 1833. Science "came to be seen as the intellectual progenitor of technology, the guarantor of God's order and rule, the proper way of gaining knowledge, and the key to national prosperity and international harmony." (96) This is real faith.

"The British association sought to unite differing, even opposing, interest in the pursuit of a transcendent end. That end was truth - knowledge-scientia. However, it was true according to a particular construction; not simply Scientia, but the Advancement of Science. . . The ideological categories which natural knowledge was been cast remains familiar today: science as value free and objective knowledge; science as the key to economic and technological progress; science as the firm fruit of proper method; science as an available, visible, and desirable cultural resource." (224) Science as the basis of hope for all good things now and salvation of the future.

Interesting to note some critical thoughts from the start. One was the danger of pantheism, or believing God is in all and is equal to creation. Think modern environmentalism, earth as Gaia. "The Tractarians were quick to see that, whatever it's spokesman might proclaim, the BAAS was a new spirituality, a new claim to authority in affairs of the mind and of the state." (231)

In 1833 Fredrick Nolan saw the danger that "The end which is secretly saw that this general organization, is the establishment of the ascendancy of philosophy on the ruins of religion; and that a transfer is silently projected of the influence which the ecclesiastical body have so long exercised over the human mind, to the scientific." (234) The focus on secondary causes, which can be observed and studied, leads to ignoring and then denying that purpose and planning exist, thus leading to materialist atheism. Modern thinking proves him correct.

One observer wrote in 1833 concerning methods used to promote this new 'clerisy': "With the aid concerts and balls, beautiful women, sound claret and strong whiskey, the sages make out remarkably well." (95) Obviously more than cold reason used to promote this new love of scientific authority.

This is a scholarly work intended as a reference work for academia. Detailed footnotes, fourteen pages of bibliography, seventeen page index. Many charts, tables and includes drawings of some of the noted men. 531 pages. A prodigious work.

Presents one origin of the conception of science that has captured the minds and hearts of the modern world. Shows that this faith replaced the previous faith. It was the work of men with a desire to benefit the world and with a desire to benefit themselves. The created this belief system by design. Science could have held to its roots in Christianty. The desire to replace the clergy's authority with the new 'clerisy' (themselves) directed their decisions.
– Clay Garner