Preface

I have struggled a little with this one. Three pages of dense, serious and overly long sentences. This is a section I can't imagine that the Reverend intended for the children but for the parents, considering the length to which it extols the virtues of this particular form of education.

It's also quite noticeable that the Rev. Joyce does not credit Maria Edgeworth with authorship of Practical Education but rather her father alone. Either my research into the volume is incorrect, or there are some gender issues at play here.

I'll let you have a chance to read the text before I carry on.

PREFACE.

—

    THE Author feels himself extremely happy in the opportunity which this publication affords him of acknowledging the obligations he is under to the authors of 'Practical Education,' for the pleasure and instruction which he has derived from that valuable work. To this he is solely indebted for the idea of writing on the subject of Natural Philosophy for the use of children. How far his plan corresponds with that suggested by Mr. Edgeworth, in his chapter on Mechanics, must be left with a candid public to decide.

    The Author conceives, at least, he shall be justified in asserting, that no introducion to natural and experimental philosophy has been attempted in a method so familiar and easy as that which he now offers to the public :-none which appears to him so properly adapted to the capacities of young people of ten or eleven years of age, a period of life which, from the Author's own experience, he is confident is by no means too early to induce in children habits of scientific reasoning. In this opinion he is sanctioned by the authority of Mr. Edgeworth. "Parents," says he "are anxious that children should be conversant with mechanics, and with what are called the mechanical powers. Certainly no species of knowledge is better suited to the taste and capacity of youth, and yet it seldom forms a part of early instruction. Everybody talks of the lever, the wedge, and the pulley, but most people perceive that the notions which they have of their respective uses is unsatisfactory and indistinct, and many endeavour, at a late period of life, to acquire a scientific and exact knowledge of the effects that are produced by implements which are in everybody's hands, or that are absolutely necessary in the daily occupations of mankind."

    The Author trusts that the whole work will be found a complete compendium of natural and experimental philosophy, not only adapted to the understandings of young people, but well calculated to convey that kind of familiar instruction which is absolutely necessary before a person can attend public lectures in these branches of science with advantage. "If," says Mr. Edgeworth, speaking on this subject, "the lecturer does not communicate much of that knowledge which he endeavours to explain, it is not to be attributed either to his want of skill, or to the insufficiency of his apparatus, but to the novelty of the terms which he is obliged to use. Ignorance of the language in which any science is taught, is an insuperable bar to its being suddenly acquired; besides a precise knowledge of the meaning of terms, we must have an instantaneous idea excited in our minds whenever they are repeated; and, as this can be acquired only by practice, it is impossible that philosophical lectures can be of much service to those who are not familiarly acquainted with the technical language in which they are delivered." *

    It is presumed that an attentive perusal of these Dialogues, in which the principal and most common terms of science are carefully explained and illustrated, by a variety of familiar examples, will be the means of obviating this objection, with respect to persons who may be desirous of attending those public philosophical lectures, to which the inhabitants of the metropolis have almost constant access.


Mr Edgeworth's chapter on Mechanics should be recommended to the attention of the reader, but the author feels unwilling to refer to part of a work, the whole of which deserves the careful perusal of all persons engaged in the education of youth.

It reads like the blurb on the back of a text book. Which is effectively what it is; a passage to be read by potential buyers and set out the contents of the book and the educational credentials of the author. This is the sort of man you'd want educating your children but a book by him is the next best thing seeing as you don't have that sort of money. It may as well read "If you buy this you will be doing the best for your children", which appears to be where a lot of marketing directed at parents has gone in these modern times.

I may have been hasty in judging the presence of sexism in the crediting of the Edgeworths. It is possible that the chapter on mechanics which Joyce is particularly keen on was written purely by Mr. Edgeworth. I do think it's very likely that references to a respected gentleman author were seen to be a better advertisement for the book. On top of that, the author himself claims this book to be better at its purpose than Practical Education and any other publication; a bold claim! Again, I think this is salesmanship, although I doubt that Rev. Joyce would have published until the work was of the best possible quality.

I am interested in the attitude shown regarding public lectures. Specifically that the blame for failing to communicate ideas lies primarily with the audience for not knowing enough jargon. This is a perennial problem when attempting to communicate complicated ideas; should you adjust what you say to fit your audience, or adjust your audience to fit what you say?

In the real world, where most of us predominantly have one-to-one conversations, then it's definitely the former; unless you're a total nerd with limited social skills.

However, in a one-to-many lecturing environment it becomes a little trickier. In an ideal classroom (or lecture theatre) all the students should be able to benefit from the teaching; which relies on their previous education and their retention of facts and ideas from that education. This is why we now have agreed curricula, setting a standard to which all students should be educated at any one stage before progressing to the next. This means that you should be able to teach what you aim to be teaching with minimal changes between groups of students. Of course, the world is not perfect, classrooms are rarely ideal and children learn different things at different rates; but it works for a fair proportion of students a fair proportion of the time.

In my opinion it gets weirder when we get to the equivalent of the "public lectures". Yes, there are some still run by universities and other institutions in the same mould as those mentioned in the preface. However, on an everyday basis, for the vast majority of us, this function has been met by television (and increasingly the internet). Over the years there has been a lot made of TV shows "dumbing-down" issues and I've been guilty of that; it's a rare show that I see about science that really approaches stuff at a high enough level. I am being unfair because I already know a lot of the basics and jargon due to my prior education and my reading in the intervening years. They are adjusting what they say to be understandable to someone in the mid-point of their target audience, this is what they should be doing. Yet I do really wish they'd make more for the next step on after that. Most drama series have a sense of progression where your enjoyment and understanding is affected by having see the previous shows; why doesn't this happen with science broadcasting? (I do appreciate I have completely ignored the Open University's programming, but that's all very late at night and doesn't count). It is getting better in some areas, although a lot of the shows tend to spend too much time giving us content that merely entertain and do not inform.

There is a science TV show that I thoroughly enjoy and that is The Royal Institution's annual Christmas Lectures. Even though they're aimed at students a third of my age and with a fraction of my book learning, I always get "pleasure and instruction" from them. [You can see this year's lectures on iPlayer for the next few days here and I'm sure people have naughtily uploaded them somewhere or other]

I should recognise that we are at a point where we have access to a great deal of good and well communicated science through the internet. Yet as with everything on the internet there is plenty of bad material available too and telling the difference can be a little tricky.

Click on the images for larger versions

Frontispiece and Title Page

So, here are the first few pages of the book, ignoring a couple of blank ones that aren't that interesting. I've resorted to taking photos as the fragility and size of the book does not lend itself well to being placed in a scanner. The angle that the frontispiece engraving sits on the page nicely demonstrates that the printing is definitely hand set.

This scene seems overly exaggerated to me. The well dressed man of natural philosophy and his wistfully adoring wife are one thing but surely that window is way too large, even for a palatial Georgian residence. I presume that the woodcut was chosen to appeal to respectable families of good means, or at least those who would like to see themselves as such. Nice to see that the intention is to educate women as well as children though. Bless their fragile brains, they obviously require a hand pointing to the hand indicating the moon! [I sincerely hope that I don't have to start pointing out the usage of sarcasm]

There is a name and date at the top of the title page, presumably written by the first owner of the book. I'm not entirely sure what the name is; the first two or three letters of the surname completely elude me. The date is fairly clearly August 15^th 1857.

Can anyone read what the name is? I have absolutely no idea

The printed text on the title page and the next is:

SCIENTIFIC DIALOGUES : 

INTENDED FOR

THE INSTRUCTION AND ENTERTAINMENT

OF

YOUNG PEOPLE.

IN WHICH THE

FIRST PRINCIPLES

OF

NATURAL AND EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

ARE FULLY EXPLAINED

BY THE REV. J. JOYCE

New Edition, Complete in One Volume,

WITH TWO HUNDRED WOODCUTS.

"Conversation, with the habit of explaining the meaning of words, and the structure of common domestic implements, to children, is the sure and effectual method of preparing the mind for the acquirement of science. - Edgeworth's Practical Education

LONDON:

DARTON AND CO., 58, HOLBORN HILL.





LONDON;
PRINTED BY J. O. CLARKE, 121, FLEET STREET.

I'm not exactly a young person and I've been instructed in what my educators referred to as science but I still hope to be entertained by this volume. Interestingly, in the early 18^th century the word science referred to any knowledge acquired by study and the word scientist didn't exist until the mid 19^th, hence the phrase "Natural and Experimental Philosophy".

Practical Education was a book written by Maria Edgeworth and her father, Richard, at the very end of the 18^th century. This volume seems to have focussed on teaching young children through conversation and hands-on practical experiments. I have a copy on order, maybe when we're done with this book I can give that the same treatment. We have to bear in mind that schools of any sort were exceedingly rare prior to the 19^th century. Children went into work, apprenticeship, or private tutelage if the family was wealthy enough. These books were part of a liberal movement that continued and eventually resulted in an English school system available freely to all.

Darton and Co. on Holborn Hill was originally founded by William Darton in 1804 who seems to have been a Quaker publisher of "juvenile literature" and jigsaw puzzles; his father, also called William, had been in the same trade since 1787.

I haven't been able to find anything about J. O. Clarke, the printer at Fleet Street. However,  the marvellous art-deco Daily Express Building was built at that address in the 1930s.

Click on the images to biggenate

The Reverend Jeremiah Joyce

I knew nothing about Rev. Joyce until I decided to write this blog and thought it might be a sensible thing to research him a little, to find out what other books he'd written if nothing else. It turns out that he was involved in an important event at the end of the 18^th century that I didn't really know anything about, although it is a precursor to a very important Act of Parliament in 1832 that I did learn about in school (mind-numbingly boring though it was at the time).

What follows may read like a list of facts, that's because it is.

Born in 1763, Jeremiah doesn't seem to have been from a poor family but he was a long way off gentry. He inherited land from his father (Jeremiah) in his mid teens even though he was not the first son. With assistance from Joshua, his eldest brother, Jeremiah studied to enter the Unitarian ministry. From my understanding denying the Trinity was illegal until the passing of the Doctrine of  the Trinity Act (1813), Jeremiah seems to have been showing radical tendencies fairly early on.

Joyce became a tutor to the sons and the private secretary of the 3rd Earl Stanhope, Charles Stanhope. Earl Stanhope was scientifically educated at Geneva. He was published, a successful inventor, a fellow of the Royal Society and married to the sister of Pitt the Younger (although Stanhope fell out with William Pitt over politics, which will prove interesting later).

Now this is where it starts getting politically interesting, Joyce was a member of the Society for Constitutional Information and the London Corresponding Society, both radical organisations wanting parliamentary reform. Parliament was in dire need of reform but it was far from the interests of anyone in power to accede to the wishes of educated poor people, elections were rotten. The British government feared a violent popular uprising with good reason, The French Revolution led to a declared republic in 1792 and the execution of a monarch in 1793.

May 12^th 1794: Thomas Hardy (secretary and founder of the London Corresponding Society) and Daniel Adams (secretary of the Society for Constitutional Information) were arrested and their papers seized on charges of Treasonable Practices. Two days later while teaching his students at Earl Stanhope's residence in Kent, Joyce was arrested under a warrant of the same charge and all documents connected to the two societies were seized. Within 5 hours of arrest he was in front of the Privy Council refusing to answer a lot of questions, he was remanded into the custody of the King's messenger who served the warrant. It has been speculated that Pitt targeted Joyce in the arrests in order to irritate Stanhope. In all, over 30 men from the two organisations were arrested on the same charge. On the 19^th of May, Joyce was moved to the custody of the Governor of the Tower of London under a warrant for High Treason issued by the Privy Council.

Following a government report on the papers seized from the arrested radicals, amid fears of them spying for the French, the government introduced a bill suspending habeas corpus. The bill received royal assent on 23^rd May. The prisoners could now be held without charge until February 1795. Joyce and a dozen others remained in the Tower until late October that year. From a parliamentary debate on the suspension of habeas corpus:

Those members remained, in consequence, close prisoners in the Tower, till they were brought to a solemn trial before a special commission at the Old Bailey, on the 25^th of October.  A bill of indictment had been previously found in the grand jury, at the Sessions-House, Clerkenwell, on the 2^nd of October, against Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke, J.A. Bonney, Stewart Kydd, Jeremiah Joice, Thomas Wardell, Thomas Holcroft, John Richter, Matthew Moore, John Thelwall, R. Hodson, John Baxter, and John Martin.

From Joyce's pithily titled narrative of the trial An account of Mr. Joyce's arrest for 'treasonable practices;' his examination before His Majesty's most honourable Privy Council; his commitment to the Tower and subsequent treatment; he and the the other prisoners were moved from the Tower to Newgate jail on 24^th October and were arraigned at the Old Bailey on the 25^th on one indictment to which they all pleaded not guilty. The trials started on October 28^th; by November 22^nd two lead radicals had been tried and found not guilty. Jeremiah was called to court on December 1^st with three others (over 6 months since their arrest) ; after the jury was sworn in, the Attorney General asked the jury for a verdict of acquittal and presented no evidence. They were freed; not a single arrested radical was found guilty of treason.


Joyce became the secretary of the Unitarian society and wrote a number of books (mostly scientific), one of which is the initial focus of this blog. He died in June 1816 at the age of 53. Parliament was reformed in 1832. Habeas corpus was reinstated and has quite recently disappeared to a large extent. William Pitt almost starred in Blackadder the Third. Thomas Hardy was not *that* Thomas Hardy.


Is it just me or were people's lives intensely interesting back then?


Also.. all this has happened before, and all this will happen again


Roll credits, onto the science

What's all this about then?

Among the many things I find fascinating are science, books and history. This blog is a place where I will indulge myself with these things like a geek with a keyboard and a net connection.

Look! It's an old book.

Some years ago while browsing an antique book store I found a small, well loved volume that I instantly fell in love with and bought. It's smaller than modern paperbacks and fits nicely in the hand even though it runs to almost 500 pages. The lightweight blue hardback cover is slightly embossed and the spine bears the gilded inscription "SCIENTIFIC DIALOGUES — BY THE REV^D J. JOYCE — COMPLETE AND ILLUSTRATED WITH 200 — WOODCUTS". Above the title is an image of a train in full steam, below is a device which could be a map or compass surrounded by four sailing ships. The full title given on the title page is longer and more descriptive yet but we shall get to that in a bit. It has the wonderfully uneven page size of old books that makes you realise just how recently absolutely everything was done by hand; easy to forget in our completely automated and industrial age.


I say recently but this book is old, really old. Over 150 years certainly but it's hard to say for sure, there is no printed date in any of the normal places although it does have a hand written owner's name and the date of August 15^th 1857. The Dialogues were initially printed in six separate volumes at the very beginning of the 19^th century. Jeremiah Joyce's entry in the 1885 edition of the Dictionary Of National Biography gives publication in 1807. However the 1815 edition of volume 3 has a dedication by the author dated at 1802. It was updated and reprinted many times including a Welsh translation in 1851 (some 35 years after the Reverend Joyce's death). Apparently the Dialogues were still in use in the 1890s. While the author was not alive during the reign of Queen Victoria this was most definitely a book that was read by a great many Victorians, I can feel justified in the name Scientific Victorian for this project.

This is how books should look; used and friendly.

The book is, as its title suggests, a series of conversations. These conversations are between the author and two of his children, Emma and Charles; they very politely ask sensible questions and he very politely responds with educational answers. Socrates would have been proud of this fine book. The language seems strange (and at times humorous) to my modern sensibilities, that's part of its charm. What I find most interesting is where the science is horribly wrong from our understanding, this demonstrates to us exactly how the scientific method works over time and it's a wonderful thing.

My plan is to scan and transcribe each of these conversations into a post where I'll add my own thoughts, sometimes even touching on the science. There are 140 conversations in the book, this could take a while, if I do one a week that's almost 3 years of work.

While doing my research for starting this project I discovered that the author was something of an interesting character beyond writing this book. I shall look at that a bit in the next post.

Also, I don't claim to know everything. If I get anything wrong then please point it out and give references (and no, wikipedia isn't always right)