Science and the Public 339clergy, even the unifying thread of religion was threatened. Scientifi c
naturalists repudiated supernaturalism and offered new interpretations of
humanity, nature, and society from the theories, methods, and categories
of empirical science rather then from rational analysis or Christian faith.
In effect, they defended a far more secular perspective on both science and
the worldview, which they sought to base upon it. Victorian scientifi c nat-
uralism represented the English version of the cult of science that domi-
nated Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century connected
with such intellectual currents as scientifi c materialism and scientifi c so-
cialism and with infl uential intellectuals such as Renan, Taine, Bernard,
Büchner, and Haeckel.^4 During a period when science was seen as provid-
ing the key to all knowledge, it became even more important to fi x a stable
meaning to an agreed- upon term. Whoever determined the boundaries
between legitimate and illegitimate scientifi c knowledge, between valid
and invalid ways of doing science, and between the professional scientist
and the mere amateur controlled the defi nition of science and could dom-
inate the intellectual, social, and political agenda of the day. If Huxley
and the other scientifi c naturalists had their way, all those without proper
scientifi c training would be excluded from the serious scientifi c societies
and hence the scientifi c community. This included women. Huxley had
no use for popularizers of science like Mary Somerville. He also wanted to
exclude parson naturalists and upholders of natural theology. During the
latter half of the nineteenth century, Huxley’s generation subtly altered
the meaning of the term “scientist” so that it began to take on some of the
modern connotations with which we are familiar—but the change did not
take place without a fi ght.
Members of the intellectual elite debated the key issues, as defend-
ers of the Anglican establishment, allied with physicists such as William
Thomson and James Clerk Maxwell, fought with scientifi c naturalists over
the meaning of science and both groups attempted to enroll the support
of the British public. The physicist John Tyndall, one of Huxley’s closest
allies, boldly threw out a challenge to those who resisted the cultural au-
thority of scientifi c naturalism in his infamous “Belfast Address” (1874).
In his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement
of Science, traditionally delivered before the public, he aggressively de-
clared, “we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of cosmological
theory.”^5 For his efforts, Tyndall was savagely attacked in books, pam-
phlets, and periodicals for attempting to convert the public to materialism
and for unsettling the very basis of British society. Blackwood’s Magazine
was comparatively mild in its condemnation of Tyndall as a symbol for
all those modern scientists who insisted that “‘religious theories’ must