Science and the Public 365fell asleep. Mann’s chief exposure to science seems to have come through
a popularizer of science rather than a scientifi c naturalist.^86
Mann’s subsequent intellectual development raises further questions
about the ability of scientifi c naturalists to control the meaning of science
and underlines the agency of the working class reader. Mann became po-
litically active about the same time that he became interested in astron-
omy. He declared that in London the only two subjects that attracted him
apart from workshop affairs were “social problems and astronomy.” Proc-
tor’s embargo on politics in Knowledge did not prevent him from yoking
together an interest in astronomy and social problems. In 1884 he joined
the Social Democratic Federation (which based its program in Marxist
Scientifi c Socialism), became a strong advocate of shorter working hours,
and in 1889 became deeply involved in the London dock strike. Greatly
in demand as a speaker due to his articulate style and infectious enthusi-
asm, he gave up his career as engineer and worked in the labor movement
in England and Australia, later helping to found the British Communist
Party in 1920. Mann’s reading of evolutionary theory was profoundly af-
fected by his experiences as a member of the working class and by his
study of left- wing thinkers such as Henry George. If he encountered evolu-
tion in the writings of Huxley, his rejection of Malthusianism colored his
interpretation of its social signifi cance. Evolutionary theory and social-
ism were by no means in opposition. He brought all of his working- class
categories to his reading of science and his understanding of its practical
consequences.^87 He did not recognize the cultural authority of scientifi c
naturalists like Huxley and he contested their interpretations of the mean-
ing of science.
There are parallels in the case of Percy Redfern (1875–1958), clerk and
cooperative journalist. Born to an unmarried woman of a proudly Non-
conformist and puritan family, Redfern attended a variety of schools as a
child.^88 At the age of thirteen he was instructed to abandon his love of sen-
sationalist fi ction for “scientifi c, informative books.” “I found beckoning
me the popular and romantic introductions to astronomy of R. A. Proctor,”
Redfern recalled. “For the fi rst time in my life, it seemed, I looked at the
stars.” Proctor’s books provided an escape from his squalid circumstances
in Leicester, dominated by its “garish and mean” shops, and offered him
a grand vision of the universe. Redfern was enthralled by Proctor’s plu-
ralism. “Mars had its canals,” he recollected, “and beyond that hopeful
sphere there was nothing to discourage imagination from roaming an
infi nitely- peopled universe.” Although Proctor intended his lectures and
books to guide the reader toward an appreciation of divine law in the