Domesticity in the Making of Modern Science

The fourteen chapters of this volume directly challenge the strong historiographical opposition between science and domesticity by analysing the role of domesticity in the making of the modern sciences, especially astronomy, chemistry, horticulture, engineering, meteorology, natural history, oceanography, physics, and radio technology. The authors offer a pioneering reorientation of the traditional emphasis on scientific developments associated with institutional and professional realms, by placing at the centre of their analyses such notions of domesticity as the domestic sphere, the household, the home, the family, and kinship - both biological and 'fictive.' This reorientation, the editors argue, exposes the centrality of domesticity as a material, social, and symbolic substrate that critically shaped the historical development of the modern sciences globally.

Donald L. Opitz is Associate Professor of the School for New Learning and Affiliated Scholar of History at DePaul University, USA.

Staffan Bergwik is Associate Professor of History of Science and Ideas and Senior Lecturer of Literature and History of Ideas at Stockholm University, Sweden.

Brigitte Van Tiggelen is Director of European Operations of the Chemical Heritage Foundation and a member of the Centre de Recherche en Histoire des Sciences at the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.