Iwan Rhys Morus
Biographic Data
| ID | 116170 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Iwan Rhys Morus |
| GIVEN NAMES | Iwan Rhys |
| FAMILY NAME | Morus |
| SIGNATURE | MORUS I R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aberystwyth University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8360-2653 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 88 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Out on the fringe: Wales and the history of science
Imagine a scene sometime in the 1750s in the depths of west Wales. This was wild country. Even a century later, George Borrow called it a ‘mountainous wilderness ... a waste of russet-coloured hills, with here and there a black craggy summit’. Through this desolation rides the Reverend William Williams. As he rode, he read – and the book in his saddlebags on this occasion was William Derham's Astro-Theology , first published some twenty years ear…
Presenting Futures Past: Science Fiction and the History of Science
Looking into the Future: The Telectroscope That Wasn’t There
In an 1898 short story titled “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904,” Mark Twain introduced an electrical instrument called the telectroscope. Machines for transmitting vision at a distance, telectroscopes had been speculated about since the invention of the telephone in 1876. Over the next quarter of a century, numerous inventors were credited with its imminent, but never realized, production. No such instrument was ever actually built, and it now us…
Science: Constructivist Perspectives, History of
Illuminating illusions, or, the Victorian art of seeing things
John Henry Pepper, better known as Professor Pepper of ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ fame, clearly relished the intellectual and cultural trajectory that linked his spectacular performances at the Royal Polytechnic Institution to Sir David Brewster’s researches and revelations in his Letters on Natural Magic. This paper locates both Pepper’s performances and Brewster’s text within a tradition of illusory practice and points to the importance of Scottish commo…
Illuminating the Victorians
Worlds of Wonder: Sensation and the Victorian Scientific Performance
Performances of various kinds were central to the strategies adopted by Victorian natural philosophers to constitute their authority. Appealing to the senses of their audience through spectacular effects or ingenious demonstrations of skill was key to the success of these performances. If we want to understand the politics and practice of Victorian science-and science more generally-we need to pay particular attention to these sorts of performanc…
Placing Performance
This introductory essay discusses the origins of current interest in performances and performativity in the history of science as an outcome of the concern with understanding science as practice that emerged from the 1980s onward. The language of performance, it suggests, provides useful analytic tools for historians of science because it focuses our attention on the bodies of practitioners, their embodied practices, and their presentation of sel…
Radicals, romantics and electrical showmen: Placing galvanism at the end of the english enlightenment
This paper examines the shifting cultural place of galvanic experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It surveys the ways in which political readings of galvanism by radicals and Tories during this period had an important role in determining the ways in which these kinds of experiment, and galvanism in general, were understood later in the century. The paper examines the attitudes of Humphry Davy, Thomas Beddoes and Giovanni Aldini …
Essay Review: What is the History of Science Really Like?, Science: A Four Thousand Year History
Science and its Publics, for Professionals
Working out in the nineteenth century
Wondering about science
Bodily Disciplines and Disciplined Bodies: Instruments, Skills and Victorian Electrotherapeutics
Electricity and the kinds of instruments, practices and skills that defined it were important resources for managing the body throughout the Victorian period. Late Victorian medical electricians differed vociferously over the vexed question of the relationship between the bodies they treated and the kinds of skills and practices needed for such treatment. This paper suggests that arguments about how to treat the body through electricity were also…
Seeing and Believing Science
The visual culture of the sciences has become a focus for increasing attention in recent literature. This is partly a result of the concern with examining the material culture of the sciences that has developed over the last few decades. Increasing attention has also been devoted to understanding science as spectacle and to trying to understand the spaces where scientific performances, variously understood, take place. This essay surveys some asp…
The nervous system of Britain’: Space, time and the electric telegraph in the Victorian age
From its inception, Victorian commentators on the telegraph appeared fascinated by its apparent capacity to break down barriers of space and time. They waxed lyrical over the ways in which the telegraph would bring nations closer together, break down boundaries and foster commerce. They also eulogized the ways in which the telegraph could be used as a seemingly effortless instrument of discipline. A great deal of work was needed to uphold such fa…
The Measure of Man: Technologizing the Victorian Body
Cet article traite de l'electricite et de son application, de sa relation avec et sur le corps humain et plus generalement de l'electricite medicale en Grande-Bretagne a la fin du 19e siecle
Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science
Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge
Science
Records of the Dawn of Photography: Talbot's Notebooks P and Q . Larry J. Schaaf
Manufacturing nature: Science, technology and Victorian consumer culture
The public place of science and technology in Britain underwent a dramatic change during the first half of the nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy was still on the whole the province of a relatively small group of aficionados . London possessed only one institution devoted to the pursuit of natural knowledge: the Royal Society. The Royal Society also published what was virtually the only journal dealing ex…
Currents from the Underworld: Electricity and the Technology of Display in Early Victorian England
Different Experimental Lives: Michael Faraday and William Sturgeon
Correlation and control: William Robert Grove and the construction of a new philosophy of scientific reform
Seeing and Believing Science
The visual culture of the sciences has become a focus for increasing attention in recent literature. This is partly a result of the concern with examining the material culture of the sciences that has developed over the last few decades. Increasing attention has also been devoted to understanding science as spectacle and to trying to understand the spaces where scientific performances, variously understood, take place. This essay surveys some asp…
Placing Performance
This introductory essay discusses the origins of current interest in performances and performativity in the history of science as an outcome of the concern with understanding science as practice that emerged from the 1980s onward. The language of performance, it suggests, provides useful analytic tools for historians of science because it focuses our attention on the bodies of practitioners, their embodied practices, and their presentation of sel…
Worlds of Wonder: Sensation and the Victorian Scientific Performance
Performances of various kinds were central to the strategies adopted by Victorian natural philosophers to constitute their authority. Appealing to the senses of their audience through spectacular effects or ingenious demonstrations of skill was key to the success of these performances. If we want to understand the politics and practice of Victorian science-and science more generally-we need to pay particular attention to these sorts of performanc…
The nervous system of Britain’: Space, time and the electric telegraph in the Victorian age
From its inception, Victorian commentators on the telegraph appeared fascinated by its apparent capacity to break down barriers of space and time. They waxed lyrical over the ways in which the telegraph would bring nations closer together, break down boundaries and foster commerce. They also eulogized the ways in which the telegraph could be used as a seemingly effortless instrument of discipline. A great deal of work was needed to uphold such fa…
Different Experimental Lives: Michael Faraday and William Sturgeon
Illuminating illusions, or, the Victorian art of seeing things
John Henry Pepper, better known as Professor Pepper of ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ fame, clearly relished the intellectual and cultural trajectory that linked his spectacular performances at the Royal Polytechnic Institution to Sir David Brewster’s researches and revelations in his Letters on Natural Magic. This paper locates both Pepper’s performances and Brewster’s text within a tradition of illusory practice and points to the importance of Scottish commo…
Manufacturing nature: Science, technology and Victorian consumer culture
The public place of science and technology in Britain underwent a dramatic change during the first half of the nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy was still on the whole the province of a relatively small group of aficionados . London possessed only one institution devoted to the pursuit of natural knowledge: the Royal Society. The Royal Society also published what was virtually the only journal dealing ex…
Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge
Correlation and control: William Robert Grove and the construction of a new philosophy of scientific reform
Presenting Futures Past: Science Fiction and the History of Science
Working out in the nineteenth century
Bodily Disciplines and Disciplined Bodies: Instruments, Skills and Victorian Electrotherapeutics
Electricity and the kinds of instruments, practices and skills that defined it were important resources for managing the body throughout the Victorian period. Late Victorian medical electricians differed vociferously over the vexed question of the relationship between the bodies they treated and the kinds of skills and practices needed for such treatment. This paper suggests that arguments about how to treat the body through electricity were also…
The Measure of Man: Technologizing the Victorian Body
Cet article traite de l'electricite et de son application, de sa relation avec et sur le corps humain et plus generalement de l'electricite medicale en Grande-Bretagne a la fin du 19e siecle
Energy & Empire: A biographical study of Lord Kelvin
The Sociology of Sparks: An Episode in the History and Meaning of Electricity
This paper addresses the problem of measurement in nineteenth-century electrical science. By using the conceptual tools provided by a social constructivist sociology of scientific knowledge, it is possible to display the reciprocal relationship between different actors' conceptions of electrical science and their perceptions of the meaning and significance of electrical measurements. In particular, the debate between Michael Faraday and William S…
The Sociology of Sparks: An Episode in the History and Meaning of Electricity
This paper addresses the problem of measurement in nineteenth-century electrical science. By using the conceptual tools provided by a social constructivist sociology of scientific knowledge, it is possible to display the reciprocal relationship between different actors' conceptions of electrical science and their perceptions of the meaning and significance of electrical measurements. In particular, the debate between Michael Faraday and William S…
Energy & Empire: A biographical study of Lord Kelvin
James Joule: A biography
Correlation and control: William Robert Grove and the construction of a new philosophy of scientific reform
Different Experimental Lives: Michael Faraday and William Sturgeon
Currents from the Underworld: Electricity and the Technology of Display in Early Victorian England
Manufacturing nature: Science, technology and Victorian consumer culture
The public place of science and technology in Britain underwent a dramatic change during the first half of the nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy was still on the whole the province of a relatively small group of aficionados . London possessed only one institution devoted to the pursuit of natural knowledge: the Royal Society. The Royal Society also published what was virtually the only journal dealing ex…
Records of the Dawn of Photography: Talbot's Notebooks P and Q . Larry J. Schaaf
Science
The Measure of Man: Technologizing the Victorian Body
Cet article traite de l'electricite et de son application, de sa relation avec et sur le corps humain et plus generalement de l'electricite medicale en Grande-Bretagne a la fin du 19e siecle
Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science
Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge
The nervous system of Britain’: Space, time and the electric telegraph in the Victorian age
From its inception, Victorian commentators on the telegraph appeared fascinated by its apparent capacity to break down barriers of space and time. They waxed lyrical over the ways in which the telegraph would bring nations closer together, break down boundaries and foster commerce. They also eulogized the ways in which the telegraph could be used as a seemingly effortless instrument of discipline. A great deal of work was needed to uphold such fa…
Wondering about science
Bodily Disciplines and Disciplined Bodies: Instruments, Skills and Victorian Electrotherapeutics
Electricity and the kinds of instruments, practices and skills that defined it were important resources for managing the body throughout the Victorian period. Late Victorian medical electricians differed vociferously over the vexed question of the relationship between the bodies they treated and the kinds of skills and practices needed for such treatment. This paper suggests that arguments about how to treat the body through electricity were also…
Seeing and Believing Science
The visual culture of the sciences has become a focus for increasing attention in recent literature. This is partly a result of the concern with examining the material culture of the sciences that has developed over the last few decades. Increasing attention has also been devoted to understanding science as spectacle and to trying to understand the spaces where scientific performances, variously understood, take place. This essay surveys some asp…
Working out in the nineteenth century
Science and its Publics, for Professionals
Radicals, romantics and electrical showmen: Placing galvanism at the end of the english enlightenment
This paper examines the shifting cultural place of galvanic experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It surveys the ways in which political readings of galvanism by radicals and Tories during this period had an important role in determining the ways in which these kinds of experiment, and galvanism in general, were understood later in the century. The paper examines the attitudes of Humphry Davy, Thomas Beddoes and Giovanni Aldini …
Essay Review: What is the History of Science Really Like?, Science: A Four Thousand Year History
Illuminating the Victorians
Worlds of Wonder: Sensation and the Victorian Scientific Performance
Performances of various kinds were central to the strategies adopted by Victorian natural philosophers to constitute their authority. Appealing to the senses of their audience through spectacular effects or ingenious demonstrations of skill was key to the success of these performances. If we want to understand the politics and practice of Victorian science-and science more generally-we need to pay particular attention to these sorts of performanc…
Placing Performance
This introductory essay discusses the origins of current interest in performances and performativity in the history of science as an outcome of the concern with understanding science as practice that emerged from the 1980s onward. The language of performance, it suggests, provides useful analytic tools for historians of science because it focuses our attention on the bodies of practitioners, their embodied practices, and their presentation of sel…
Illuminating illusions, or, the Victorian art of seeing things
John Henry Pepper, better known as Professor Pepper of ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ fame, clearly relished the intellectual and cultural trajectory that linked his spectacular performances at the Royal Polytechnic Institution to Sir David Brewster’s researches and revelations in his Letters on Natural Magic. This paper locates both Pepper’s performances and Brewster’s text within a tradition of illusory practice and points to the importance of Scottish commo…
Science: Constructivist Perspectives, History of
Philosophy (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · History (14 works) · Art (11 works) · History of Science and Natural History (11 works) · Art history (10 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · History (9 works) · Political science (9 works)