Science, Pseudoscience, and Science Falsely So- Called 287By far the most important distinction emerging between science and
not- science was the one between scientifi c and popular knowledge. This
distinction played a profoundly important role in the control of scientifi c
knowledge and practice by aspiring leaders of science and medicine. Since
such so- called professionalization was more advanced in Britain than in
the United States, one of the earliest public links between pseudoscience
and “popular delusions” or the “slowness in the capacity of the popular
mind” occurred in an evaluation of homeopathy in the Edinburgh- based
Northern Journal of Medicine. American pens inscribed less strident connec-
tions between pseudoscience and untutored interest in scientifi c subjects,
thanks in part to their incompatibility with the majority of antebellum
public rhetoric; but it was evident beneath the surface. In a letter to Joseph
Henry in 1843, John K. Kane, the senior secretary of the American Phil-
osophical Society, worried that “all sorts of pseudo- scientifi cs” were on
their way to try to win the recently vacated position as head of the Coast
Survey by way of enlisting Henry’s help to encourage Bache to make a bid
for the position. Henry himself lamented in a letter to Bache the recent
“avalanch of pseudo- science” and wondered how the “host of Pseudo-
Savants” could “be controlled and directed into a proper course.”^21
The last quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed a marked growth
in references to pseudoscience, both in American periodicals and in
English- speaking culture generally. Method remained a powerful means
of identifying pseudoscience, particularly the tendency to leap to conclu-
sions “in advance of the experimental evidence which alone could justify
them.” Likewise, the presence of potential profi t continued to signal the
presence of pseudoscience. One correspondent in an 1897 issue of Science
noted that the recent discovery of x- rays had “already been made a source
of revenue by more than one pseudo- scientist.”^22 At times, a moral note
appeared in broadsides against pseudoscience. Daniel G. Brinton’s presi-
dential address at the annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1894 strongly linked pseudoscience
to the fundamental dishonesty and snobbery of “mystery, concealment,
[and] occultism.” Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science found itself both
denounced as a pseudoscience (and a science falsely so- called) and divided
by “pseudo Scientists,” who questioned the prophet.^23
In addition, observers could point to an enduring set of historical
touchstones in their attempts to delineate the pseudoscientifi c, including
astrology, alchemy, and what most critics assumed were the thoroughly
discredited notions of phrenology.^24 Of course, not everyone agreed on
the last point. Phrenology remained a topic of popular interest. The num-
ber of phrenological publications even experienced something of a small