Science and the Public 347Gould pursued a program of improving the state of American astronomy
by disseminating German methodology and founding scientifi c institu-
tions based on the German model. Though Gould failed to transform the
Dudley Observatory into his vision of a research institution while he was
director, he successfully developed the Astronomical Journal (established
in 1849) into a well- respected scientifi c periodical with an international
reputation. Like Huxley, he had a formidable group of allies who belonged
to an informal group of research scientists, known as the Lazzaroni, led
by Alexander Dallas Bache (1806–1867), a physicist and director of the
U.S. Coast Survey. Other members included mathematician, physicist,
and Harvard professor Benjamin Peirce (1854–1914); Harvard professor
of natural history Louis Aggasiz (1807–1873); and Joseph Henry (1797–
1878), physicist and fi rst director of the Smithsonian Institution.^28
Professionalization did not merely involve the transformation of sci-
entifi c institutions and practices. The revolution in the meaning of sci-
ence, and its larger cultural signifi cance, can be detected in two of Huxley’s
essays, published almost twenty years apart. In his “On the Educational
Value of the Natural History Sciences” (1854), Huxley stressed that the
methods of all the sciences were identical, whether the scientist was deal-
ing with the physical or the life sciences. He declared that “Science is, I be-
lieve, nothing but ‘trained’ and ‘organized common sense,’ differing from
the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods
differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman’s cut and
thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.” Since
the man of science “simply uses with scrupulous exactness, the methods
which we all, habitually and at every moment, use carelessly,” everyone
could be trained, like the guardsman, to develop and perfect the “hewing
and poking” of the savage.^29 Huxley rejected the notion, infl uential before
the midcentury, that scientifi c creativity was an unteachable innate gift of
the few. Instead, Huxley presented a seemingly more democratic science,
which emphasized how a scientifi c education could discipline the mind
and teach the public to resist such unscientifi c fancies as table- turning
or mesmerism.^30
Almost twenty years later, in his “On the Study of Biology” (1876),
Huxley outlined a position that emphasized his increased commitment to
the professionalization of science. Even the title of his earlier essay, “On
the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences,” retained a role
for the older tradition of natural history, which searched for insight into
the order of nature, often from a religious perspective. But in the later
essay, Huxley characterized natural history as an outmoded term and un-
abashedly embraced the term “biology.” Interestingly enough, Huxley