ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the sources of Thomas Dick's enormous popularity in America, and the ways in which his ideas interacted with American society and culture. It examines the publishing history of Dick's works in America and reviews of Dick's works in various periodicals. Most reviews were complimentary, even adulatory. But a few critics, most notably the natural philosopher and science popularizer Denison Olmsted, did express reservations about Dick's works. The chapter explains Dick within a Northern evangelical cultural milieu. Dick's honorary doctorate was only the most obvious manifestation of the respect that Americans accorded him. For a religiously committed and increasingly literate American public, Dick's message that science, pursued correctly, represented a non-sectarian and pious quest for knowledge of God and was, in essence, a form of worship, was intrinsically and powerfully appealing. Dick's works gained remarkably large and varied audiences in America.
