INTRODUCTION

This book is another history of the making of physics in the nineteenth cen-
tury, yet a singular one. Overall, a different focus on events and actors, and a
more accurate and well-balanced periodization distinguishes it from previous
accounts. My aim is not to offer a complement to previous histories of physics,
but to pinpoint problems in its standard historiography, to propose solutions,
and to contribute to the writing of a new history of physics in consonance with
current historiographical challenges.
This book characterizes the making of physics as a discipline in the nineteenth

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century as a process driven by practices of school teaching and pedagogical writ-
ing, book production and distribution, and studying and reading, shaped by
persistent international communication. The originality of this approach lies
in its focus on education, book culture, international comparison and cross-
national transit.
It is not by chance that the concept of discipline is a cultural product of nine-
teenth-century society. Historians have characterized disciplines in several ways
which are often applied separately: a particular corpus of knowledge, a sequence
of questions, problems and methods, an institutional framework, the profile of a
community of practitioners, the invention of a genealogy, a tradition and a self-
image, the establishment of a common language, a discourse and a distinctively
recognizable literature, or the enforcement of power through a normative struc-
ture of social authority and control. An efficient way of combining the focus on
knowledge and practice with that on institutional, occupational and social roles
is to define scientific disciplines as social systems of communication.1
The configuration of disciplines has commonly been located in certain
institutions and their tools of communication: universities, academies, learned
societies and schools, and treatises, periodicals and textbooks. It has often
been held that disciplines are created in academic institutions, and subse-
quently adopted elsewhere. In schools, they are adapted to the requirements of
beginners.2 Here, traditional views on pedagogy are similar to those on populari-
zation: mere tools to simplify (or degrade) complex knowledge into elementary
notions, from top (academia or cultural elites) to bottom (school or laity); forms

–1–

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 2 Communicating Physics

of communication strictly aimed at reproducing knowledge, but unable to create

original meaning.
Like the dominant view of popularization, this conception of pedagogy has
been criticized in contemporary scholarship: In fact, ‘at the bottom’, the making
of school subjects and pedagogy has a creative input in the general process of disci-
plinary configuration.3 A study of the making of disciplines will thus have to deal
with the analysis of interactions between school and university, instead of postu-
lating a simplistic subordination of the former to the latter.4 This is particularly
relevant in the nineteenth century and in regard to the sciences, since the estab-
lishment of scientific disciplines such as physics, chemistry and natural history is
inseparable from their development as school subjects in secondary education.
This book intends to prove that the study of the interface between second-
ary and university education, and the nineteenth-century articulation between
these two different but connected spheres can be fruitfully used as a focal point
for historical research. Previous work suggests the interest of pursuing this
agenda and the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach.5
An important contribution of this book is precisely the promotion of interdis-

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ciplinary interaction by the combination of approaches from history of science,
history of education and book history. Its main objects of research deserved it.
At the heart of this book are two physics textbooks by a French teacher and
their English translations. Adolphe Ganot published in mid-nineteenth-century
Paris two textbooks which rapidly became major best-sellers in the learning of
physics across primary, secondary, university and informal education in France.
During the second half of the century, they were translated into a large number
of languages and became standard introductions to physics worldwide. Ganot’s
textbooks were translated in England by Edmund Atkinson, a young chemist
who oriented his professional career towards physics teaching. Atkinson’s edi-
tions assured an unrivalled status for Ganot’s textbooks in the English market
for most of the century. Thus, during the second half of the nineteenth century
Ganot’s textbooks represent to a large extent what and how physics was learned
by most students in France, England and beyond, in a key moment for the con-
figuration of physics as a discipline.
Paradoxically, Ganot’s textbooks have elicited little interest among histori-
ans.6 Ganot’s physique and Atkinson’s physics are conspicuous by their absence in
the history of physics.7 Confronting this problem immediately raises a number
of questions: Why did Ganot’s textbooks became so successful? What was their
impact on education? What was their contribution to the making of physics as a
discipline? How did they reach so many countries? Why were two French text-
books translated into English and why were they so successful in England? Why
are Ganot and Atkinson so little known? What are the differences between the
French and English editions? What was Atkinson’s contribution to the English

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 Introduction 3

editions? As we shall see, the study of Ganot’s textbooks raises further questions
which are of great significance for the historiographies of science, education, and
the book.
Overall, this book investigates the tension between ‘form’ and ‘meaning’
present in the aforementioned historiographies, and applies the results of this
enquiry to the characterization of nineteenth-century physics as a discipline. To
this end, it tackles three areas in which the question of ‘form’ versus ‘meaning’ is
particularly significant: the production, circulation and appropriation of scien-
tific knowledge, respectively. The standard historiography of science still holds
too often an idealized view of scientific knowledge, conceived as an immaterial
canon. The materiality and forms of production and distribution of scientific
texts are often deemed irrelevant to understand their scientific meaning. Fur-
thermore, it is still often implicit in the standard view that cultural and national
boundaries do not affect the communication of meaning: knowledge is diffused
universally by scientific authors, without constraint or change. Thus, teaching
and reading are often considered as mere forms of diffusion which do not affect
the substance of knowledge.8

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However, recent work indicates the need of blurring the distinction between
form and meaning by taking into account the active role that actions such as book
production and distribution, teaching, writing, and reading have in the making of
scientific knowledge.9 In the following narrative I summarize the main historical
questions in this field, which I elaborate further in the first chapter of this book.
But first I will set up the problem of defining nineteenth-century physics.

Physics
What is this thing called physics? The standard historiography of physics pro-
vides a clear answer to this question: the making of physics took place during
the nineteenth century through successive developments led in turns by French,
British and German practitioners, respectively. The process was complete around
1900 and consisted of the unification of what hitherto were isolated fields of
enquiry into nature, through the substitution of the theory of imponderable flu-
ids for the principle of energy conservation, and the development of a compact
theoretical, mathematical and experimental approach.10 In spite of the sophisti-
cation of the current historiography of nineteenth-century physics – especially
shaped by approaches from cultural history – the general consensus about this
general framework is striking.
The simplicity of this narrative is in contrast, for instance, with the substitu-
tion, in the neighbouring field of chemistry, of simple narratives of origins and
revolutions by a historiography based on a plural set of explanations, factors and
approaches, aimed at characterizing discipline building and historical change.11

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 4 Communicating Physics

Historians of physics can learn from the historiography of chemistry not only
because of its sophistication, but also because of the blurry boundaries between
chemistry and physics in the nineteenth century.12 The standard historiography
of nineteenth-century physics is also at variance with the new historiography of
twentieth-century physics. The work of Peter Galison and others has shown the
non-existence of a unitary ‘physics’ and the coexistence instead of different cul-
tures of physics subjected to constant interaction and multidirectional exchange.13
Historians have historicized ‘physics’ by presenting it as a nineteenth-century
‘invention’, thus making the contingency of its origin a central object of discus-
sion.14 But this useful strategy has also led to several problems associated with
the resulting narrative. In terms of periodization, this narrative is teleological in
assuming, more or less explicitly, that nineteenth-century developments are suc-
cessive steps to form twentieth-century physics. Inevitably most accounts look
at nineteenth-century physics from 1900. In terms of geography, it has implicitly
assumed a narrow centre-periphery model in which physics is defined by one or
two countries being central in a certain period, and diffused elsewhere. In terms
of epistemological foundation, it is taken for granted that the process of concep-

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tual unification in physics could be subject to early disagreement and debate, but
ended up in generalized consensus and acceptance everywhere.
In this perspective, Ganot’s textbooks would not belong to a hegemonic
period of French physics and can thus be ignored. Historians of nineteenth-cen-
tury physics have thus missed the relevance of the fact that, during the second
half of the century, French textbooks had a fundamental role in the education of
school and college physics students in Britain and elsewhere.
Moreover, Ganot’s and Atkinson’s textbook physics make clear that the con-
ceptual impulse to unify nineteenth-century physics might perhaps be more a
desideratum than a reality, and the result of a particular selection of actors and
an overemphasis on their claims. Ganot’s physique and Atkinson’s physics offer a
big picture of nineteenth-century physics in which mid-century developments
are core, and they display the diversity of epistemological frameworks and prac-
tices coexisting in physics in different periods and places.
A major challenge for the future history of nineteenth-century physics might
be to confront the urge of further comparative and cross-national work analysing
the multifarious cultures of nineteenth-century physics across cultural collectives
and national boundaries. This problem is connected to standard perceptions of
the role of communication in the making of science, which leads us to consider
the role that ‘production’, ‘circulation’ and ‘appropriation’ have in this book.

Production
Characterizing the making of a discipline involves establishing who the actors
were in this process. Traditionally, this implies asking the question: Who were
the producers of physics, that is, who were the physicists? The standard answer

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 Introduction 5

is simple: the authors of the most ‘relevant’ scientific papers and treatises in
this field. In the standard historiography of physics, this has commonly meant
the most ‘relevant’ authors contributing to the unification of physics, whether
through theoretical speculation, the development of characteristic mathemati-
cal or experimental techniques, or a combination of all of these. Recently, Iwan
Morus has expanded this set of actors by emphasizing the importance of pop-
ularisers and, in particular, those involved in the making, manipulation and
exhibition of scientific instruments.15 However, this important contribution has
not managed to reshape significantly the standard characterization of physics.
The production to which this standard picture refers – the most ‘relevant’
physics papers and specialized treatises – is in fact a narrow part of the whole
nineteenth-century physics production and one with a narrow and elitist reader-
ship. In contrast, textbooks such as those of Ganot and Atkinson had large print
runs, they circulated across a wide range of readerships and they were canonical
sources for those beginning their training in physics. Furthermore, as we shall
see, they provided a genuine picture of physics and were also used by advanced
physicists. In his history of literary authorship, historian Nigel Cross showed

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a few decades ago how misleading it could be to focus exclusively on famous
authors, and he argued for a history of ‘the common writer’.16 Is there any reason
to act otherwise in the history of physics?
Textbooks had a major role in the development of physics in secondary and
university education, and for this reason they were important agents in the
shaping of the subject as a discipline. Teachers and textbook authors like Ganot
and Atkinson were important in the quantitative and qualitative development
of the discipline through the preparation of students for understanding and,
in certain cases, for the future practice of physics. Following the overarching
theme of blurring the boundaries between ‘form’ and ‘meaning’, in this book,
I consider that the making of pedagogy through textbook physics was also an
important part of the making of physics as a discipline. The production of phys-
ics also took place in schools and the preparation of textbooks involved the
production of original knowledge.
In this book, when I talk about ‘production’ I intend to talk both of the
making of ideas (in physics, pedagogy and book design) and of their practical
execution, including a major condition for their existence, which is their com-
munication. Thus, I consider that the ‘forms of production’ also contributed to
shape the meaning of physical knowledge.17
This account pays equal attention to the work of research physicists, teachers,
textbook authors, print technicians, booksellers, publishers and readers. Instead
of assuming that the message put forward by elite physics authors was replicated
instantaneously and universally, a different picture emerges when one takes into
account this expanded range of actors as active producers of knowledge.

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 6 Communicating Physics

In the nineteenth century, publishers and booksellers had a major role in the
production of scientific knowledge: publication and selling strategies contributed
to determine what was published and how it was published and communicated.
In its turn, this shaped how books were read and therefore the meanings attrib-
uted to them by readers. This study also illustrates the importance of production
techniques and the impact of the material culture of the book in the making
of scientific knowledge. While print technicians are still often considered mere
intermediaries in the universal replication of scientific knowledge, here they are
given an active role in the making of science, in agreement with an increasingly
sophisticated analysis of the role of knowledge circulation in science.

Circulation
Once we have determined what physics is, who produced it, and where and how
it was produced, we should get to know how it came to spread across different
social, cultural and geographical localities, and how a global consensus might
have been reached, providing physics with its disciplinary identity.
Traditionally, a clear separation has been drawn between the production of

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science and its circulation. The study of the production and circulation of science
has commonly been – implicitly or explicitly – tackled through centre-periph-
ery or transmission/reception models.18 In these models, science is considered
to be produced in a locality and subsequently spread elsewhere, reaching intact
other localities which are seen as passive receivers.19 These models fail to take
into account several aspects which arise from a more in-depth study of knowl-
edge production and circulation: first, science is rarely produced in isolation; the
context of production is also characterized by knowledge circulation. Second,
knowledge is shaped in order to be communicated, thus again circulation shapes
production. Third, knowledge is rarely received passively; on the contrary, it is
usually subjected to creative appropriation.
The traditional view of scientific knowledge circulation is no longer tenable
in history of science. However, it is still implicit in many works. The critical
analysis of circulation has taken place especially in the field of ‘the Others’, that
is, in the study of the making of science and culture beyond Europe and in the
European ‘periphery’, giving rise to new approaches such as postcolonial histori-
ography, Atlantic history and STEP (Science and Technology in the European
Periphery).20 In contrast, it is still finding its way in the study of what is com-
monly seen as the canon of contemporary Western science. Further work needs
to be done to overcome a picture which overemphasizes national blocks and sees
international communication as a mere succession of distinct national periods of
scientific and technological hegemony. The study of Franco-British circulation
proposed in this book aims to advance in this direction.

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 Introduction 7

In addition, emerging approaches in the study of popularization are intend-

ing to promote a more symmetrical study of scientific knowledge circulation,
with approaches focused on the study of ‘communication’, images such as the
‘marketplace’, and attention to readers’ responses. In parallel, there is a move in
the history of technology to conceive ‘consumers’ as agents also intervening in
‘production’. Furthermore concepts such as that of ‘trade zone’ proposed by Gal-
ison for the study of twentieth-century physics put an increasing emphasis in the
role of collective and multilayered exchange in the making of science.21
This general move has been notably grasped by James Secord in a recent
historiographical proposal which suggests that blurring the traditional distinc-
tion between the making and the communication of knowledge could have the
potential to bridge the gap between a wide range of historical areas.22 This is an
interesting work plan which could be fruitfully applied to the study of science
education and international circulation, provided that an accurate problematiza-
tion of ‘communication’ is put forward in each case.
In this book, I have made use of this core idea. But my study in communica-
tion goes beyond the more standard focuses in history of science – currently

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geared toward the local and the national – to take into account international
communication.23 The wide circulation of Ganot’s and Atkinson’s textbooks
provide an excellent opportunity to produce work on a variety of contexts and
across them, and to reflect on the role of communication in the making of sci-
entific knowledge.
If we are going to give an active role to ‘communication’ in the making of
scientific knowledge, then we should look to better ways of characterizing how
knowledge is provided with meaning by the wide variety of historical actors
placed at the other end of the communication line. To this end, in this book
I propose the use of the concept of ‘appropriation’ in ways which connect the
individual with the collective, and the local with the global.

Appropriation
As we have seen, ‘communication’ is not a newcomer in history of science. What
distinguishes new approaches from the old centre-periphery models and trans-
mission/reception studies is that they give important agency to what hitherto
were considered passive audiences. An important inspiration here comes from
cultural history. In his study of popular culture, Roger Chartier concluded that
the ‘popular’ could not be defined as an essential nature found in objects or texts,
but by assessing the active ways in which those were ‘appropriated’ by different
kinds of readers. Other scholars have used this concept to analyse the produc-
tion of new knowledge through its circulation across large geographical scales.24

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 8 Communicating Physics

What these approaches are calling for is a more balanced and accurate assess-
ment of the making of science, respectful with cultural and historical difference
and exempted from unacknowledged cultural, political and national biases.
Hence, able to take into account the voices of a more extended range of his-
torical actors and to consider them for their own sake, in spite of their currently
inferior historiographical status. The concept of ‘appropriation’, defined as the
active process by which knowledge is provided with meaning, is thus a simple
but powerful and inclusive tool. Thus, we can free our historical understand-
ing from the myth of origins (the narrative focus on a unique act of knowledge
creation in space and time) and from the viewpoint of elites, to focus instead on
how processes of appropriation ranging from the individual to the collective and
from the local to the global contributed to shape physical knowledge as a well-
defined disciplinary knowledge.
Accordingly, in this book, I will study how physics was conceived in differ-
ent cultural and social circles beyond the realm of elite practitioners, by analysing
what physics was for actors such as teachers, students, booksellers, publishers,
printers and a wide range of readers. As we shall see, what provides Ganot’s phy-

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sique and Atkinson’s physics with the authority of the standard is the wide range
of their readerships, the large number of communication processes which they
contributed in shaping, and their capacity to promote communication across dif-
ferent cultural and social spheres in local, national and cross-national contexts.
Hence, in this book I characterize the making of physics as a discipline
through three major historical themes (production, circulation and appropria-
tion) and the development of a historiographical approach aimed at blurring
epistemological boundaries between form and meaning, or, in other words,
between production and communication. As I argue in the next chapter, a major
strength in this study is its bi-national focus. As we shall see, this book is an
exercise in comparative and cross-national history of two countries which are
traditionally considered as representing two clearly opposing scientific, educa-
tional and political models. If indeed their national cultures and histories have
genuine characteristics – as in fact all nations have – then their respective his-
toriographies have often overemphasized national exceptionality – a bias which
this work aims to correct.
Chapter 1 presents Ganot’s and Atkinson’s textbooks, and reviews the ten-
sions that the consideration of textbooks and education as sources for historical
research have caused in the historiography of science, and in particular of phys-
ics. This chapter serves as an introduction to the questions raised in this book
and implies a deep revision of Kuhnian perspectives which have long held sway.
Chapter 2 presents the context in which Ganot’s and Atkinson’s textbooks
appeared by providing a general overview of the physics textbook market in
nineteenth-century France and England. It determines who published physics

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 Introduction 9

textbooks, for what reasons, in what moments, and for what readerships, and
characterizes the nineteenth-century physics textbook, its functions and its uses.
This overview serves as a background to the following chapter.
Chapter 3 narrows its view to focus on a comparison of Adolphe Ganot
and Edmund Atkinson as physics practitioners. My aim is to examine why
they produced their textbooks, how they produced them and for whom they
were intended. This insight into their work is organized in three major themes,
namely the study of their teaching, reading and writing practices.
Chapter 4 deals with the production of Ganot’s physique. In the first part of
the chapter I analyse the contribution of printers and illustrators to this process.
In the second part, I characterize physics as a discipline, according to the struc-
ture, order and narrative of Ganot’s textbook physics.
Chapter 5 connects the characterization of Ganot’s physique performed in
Chapter 4, with the study of Atkinson’s physics developed in Chapter 6. It does
so by vindicating the role of publishers and booksellers in the making of science.
In this chapter I consider the agency of these actors in the production of Ganot’s
textbook physics in England, and show how their professional practices did not

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only affect the circulation of physical knowledge but also its constitution.
Chapter 6 is symmetrical to Chapter 4 and eminently comparative. In the
first part of the chapter, I examine the production of Atkinson’s physics and
the role of teachers, publishers and printing techniques in this process. Subse-
quently, I characterize the structure, order and narrative of Atkinson’s physics,
and I compare it with Ganot’s physique. However, I contend that the analysis of
production and its products is not enough to characterize physics, which is also
shaped by its readers.
Chapter 7 offers an overview of readers and readings of Ganot’s and Atkin-
son’s textbooks, classified in three categories which characterize roughly three
practices and contexts of reading (formal education; informal education, popu-
larization and general reading; and professional practice). This readers’ overview
of Ganot’s physique and Atkinson’s physics allows us to reflect on the nature of
physics as a discipline and on the processes by which certain knowledge becomes
standard.

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