British Women Writers, Technology, and the Sciences, 1880–1920

Abstract

The transformative years from 1880 to 1920 witnessed dramatic shifts in scientific thinking, as what we now think of as modern science began to emerge in a variety of disciplines. Physics moved from theorizing that light moved through the ether to widespread acceptance of Faraday’s and Maxwell’s later work arguing that light has the properties both of a wave and a particle. One of the hallmarks of this new physics was its increasing focus on phenomena that could not be studied without highly-specialized instruments, like the X-Ray a young Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) heard about in a lecture in 1897. At the same time, as suggested by Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (1905), this physics was also increasingly conscious of the effect of the observer’s viewpoint and responses on scientific data and results. In the biological sciences, Charles Darwin and other scientists, like Herbert Spencer and T.H. Huxley, continued to develop Darwin’s ideas on evolution first laid out in The Origin of Species (1859), and in 1900, four scientists independently rediscovered and verified the work of Gregor Johann Mendel on pea plant hybridization, which disproved Lamarck’s theories of acquired inheritance and inaugurated the field of genetics. The study of the mind, psychology, was transformed by the work, not only of Williams James, but also of Sigmund Freud and his theories of the unconscious, neurosis, and treatment in what became popularly known as the ‘talking cure’; Freudians also provided analysis of the mental trauma of war, known as shell shock, as soldiers returned home from World War I. Each of these scientific disciplines became gradually professionalized, requiring more advanced training of practitioners and researchers, and each sought greater cultural legitimacy. Such significant advances carried over to practical applications in technology that touched all aspects of British life.