Experiencing the Meeting

Issues of knowledge reception and of audience engagement have featured prominently in studies of the history of science in recent decades. Much research has focused on the eighteenth century and the role of landed and professional classes in scientific meetings and lectures. ¹ Levels of attendance at meetings, the length of discussions and the degree of participation in debate are all measures which historians have employed to assess audience responses to scientific ideas. However Steven Shapin's contention that, ‘Consideration of the audience for science is pointless if it cannot be shown that the audience is active rather than passive, influential rather than submissive’, has been questioned by research focused on the Victorian era, and specifically on meetings of the BAAS. ² His approach privileges a definition of ‘audience’ as those present in person at a scientific meeting or event, who engaged with and responded to the ideas they saw and heard presented. Such a definition, while appropriate for the purpose of examining the communication of scientific ideas, is less applicable here. In this study, in which the focus ranges beyond the scientific content of parliaments of science to a consideration of them as urban events, a broader definition of audience is required. Similar to the way in which the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century elections has revealed levels of involvement among the non-voting public, ³ it will be suggested here that people beyond the confines of the meeting rooms and lecture theatres found ways of experiencing or engaging with the congresses taking place in their town. In pursuit of this, a much wider definition of participation is adopted, encompassing not just engagement with the knowledge content of the meetings, but evidence of interest in the excitement and spectacle generated by these occasions.