Science in the early Athenaeum: a mirror of crystallization

The Athenaeum, one of the most influential weekly magazines of Victorian Britain, was launched in 1828, towards the end of the period which saw the crystallization of science out of eighteenth-century natural philosophy and the differentiation of the individual sciences one from another. We examine the magazine’s coverage of specific scientific areas in the year from May 1828 to April 1829, looking at what it defined as science and how it arrived at its definitions. The picture that emerges is complex, influenced by editorial preferences as well as more clearly discernible objective criteria. But, at this stage, The Athenaeum appears to be opposed to opening up a gulf between the scientifically literate and the rest of its readership, reminding science of its debt to earlier endeavours. The early Athenaeum The early nineteenth century was a critical period for the development of culture in Europe as a whole, and of science in Britain in particular. It was a period when moder