Aileen Fyfe
Biographic Data
| ID | 410252 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aileen Fyfe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aileen |
| FAMILY NAME | Fyfe |
| SIGNATURE | FYFE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of St Andrews |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6794-4140 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Visualising Historical University Records to Explore the Colonial Connections of the Students and Alumni of the University of St Andrews, 1700–1897
This paper uses the historical student records of the University of St Andrews to demonstrate how an exploration of the student community can contribute to our understanding of the ways UK universities have been implicated in British colonial/imperial activities. It also contributes to the investigation of student origins, international student mobility and alumni career patterns. Using digital technology, we identified 901 individuals who came f…
From philanthropy to business: The economics of Royal Society journal publishing in the twentieth century
Scientific journal publishing has become a lucrative enterprise, for commercial firms and (some) society publishers alike; but it was not always thus. The Royal Society is the publisher of the world's longest-running scientific journal, and for most of the history of the Philosophical Transactions , its publication was a severe drain on the Society's finances. This paper uses the rich archives of the Royal Society to investigate the economic tran…
The Business of Isis since the 1950s
Funding: Arts & Humanities Research Council AH/K001841
Self-help for learned journals: Scientific societies and the commerce of publishing in the 1950s
In the decades after the Second World War, learned society publishers struggled to cope with the expanding output of scientific research and the increased involvement of commercial publishers in the business of publishing research journals. Could learned society journals survive economically in the postwar world, against this competition? Or was the emergence of a sales-based commercial model of publishing - in contrast to the traditional model o…
Managing the Growth of Peer Review at the Royal Society Journals, 1865-1965
This article examines the evolution of peer review and the modern editorial processes of scholarly journals by analyzing a novel data set derived from the Royal Society’s archives and covering 1865-1965, that is, the historical period in which refereeing (not yet known as peer review) became firmly established. Our analysis reveals how the Royal Society’s editorial processes coped with both an increasing reliance on refereeing and a growth in sub…
Ladies, Gentlemen, and Scientific Publication at the Royal Society, 1945-1990
This paper extends the scholarship on gender and scientific authorship by exploring women’s involvement in editorial decision-making. Prior to 1945, women scientists could submit their work to the journals of the Royal Society, but they were excluded from all editorial and evaluation roles: such gate-keeping roles were reserved for Fellows of the Society. We draw upon the Society’s archive to examine the experiences of female authors, referees, a…
The Royal Society and the Prehistory of Peer Review, 1665–1965
Despite being coined only in the early 1970s, ‘peer review’ has become a powerful rhetorical concept in modern academic discourse, tasked with ensuring the reliability and reputation of scholarly research. Its origins have commonly been dated to the foundation of the Philosophical Transactions in 1665, or to early learned societies more generally, with little consideration of the intervening historical development. It is clear from our analysis o…
Making public ahead of print: Meetings and publications at the Royal Society, 1752–1892
This essay examines the interplay between the meetings and publications of learned scientific societies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when journals were an established but not yet dominant form of scholarly communication. The ‘making public’ of research at meetings, long before actual ‘publication’ in society periodicals, enabled a complex of more or less formal sites of communication and discussion ahead of print. Using two cas…
Years of Scientific Periodicals
Peer reviewed
Journals, learned societies and money: Philosophical Transactions , ca . 1750–1900
This paper investigates the finances of the Royal Society and its Philosophical Transactions, showing that in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries journal publishing was a drain on funds rather than a source of income. Even without any expectation of profit, the costs of producing Transactions nevertheless had to be covered, and the way in which this was done reflected the changing financial situation of the Society. An examination of the…
Uncomfortable departments: British historians of science and the importance of disciplinary communities
This paper explores issues around disciplinary belonging and academic identity. Historians of science learn to think and practise like historians in terms of research practice, but this paper shows that British historians of science do not think of themselves as belonging to the disciplinary community of historians. They may be confident that they do history, but they insist that there is a distinction between historians and historians of science…
The Religious Tract Society
The Religious Tract Society is an evangelical, interdenominational Protestant organization founded in London in 1799. Its original aim was to produce and distribute religious tracts to convert the working classes of Great Britain to evangelical Christianity. Within forty years, the Society was publishing tracts in over a hundred languages for use in mission fields all over the world, as well as publishing religious books and periodicals for sale …
Darwin and human origins
Restricted accessMoreSectionsView Full TextView PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Cite this article Fyfe Aileen 2010Darwin and human originsNotes Rec. R. Soc.64307–309http://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2009.0078SectionRestricted accessBook reviewsDarwin and human origins Aileen Fyfe Aileen Fyfe [email protected] Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by t…
Dissecting Dissent
Conscientious Workmen or Booksellers' Hacks? The Professional Identities of Science Writers in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Existing scholarship on the debates over expertise in mid-nineteenth-century Britain has demonstrated the importance of popular writings on the sciences to definitions of scientific authority. Yet while men of science might position themselves in opposition to the stereotype of the merely popular writer, the self-identity of the popular writer remained ambiguous. This essay examines the careers of William Charles Linnaeus Martin (1798-1864) and T…
Commerce and Philanthropy: The Religious Tract Society and the Business of Publishing
Peer reviewed
Victorian publishing
Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain
Aileen Fyfe's Science and Salvation explores the vibrant world of popular science publishing in Victorian Britain, demonstrating how religious belief shaped the production, dissemination, and consumption of scientific knowledge. Focusing on the Religious Tract Society (RTS), a leading evangelical publisher, Fyfe reveals how the RTS used science to promote its vision of a divinely ordered universe and a morally responsible Christian citizenry. The…
Telling stories
In the beginning, there was Dava Sobel and Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (1998). Others followed, in a veritable flood which D. P. Miller recently dubbed the ‘Sobel Effect’. Academic historians of science have been concerned by this flood, partly because people other than them are (presumably) making money out of ‘their’ subject, but also because of the ways it might affect the p…
Publishing and the classics: Paley’s Natural theology and the nineteenth-century scientific canon
Reading Children's Books in Late Eighteenth-Century Dissenting Families
The eighteenth-century commodifications of childhood and the sciences overlapped in the production of science books for children. This article examines a children's book written by two members of the Unitarian circle around Warrington Academy in the 1790s, and contrasts it with a Church of England work. The analysis reveals the extent to which religious differences could affect parental attitudes to the natural world, reason, the uses of the scie…
The reception of William Paley's Natural Theology in the University of Cambridge
In order to pass the BA examination, it was, also, necessary to get up Paley's Evidences of Christianity , and his Moral Philosophy . This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the Evidences with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his Natural Theology gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of th…
The Royal Society and the Prehistory of Peer Review, 1665–1965
Despite being coined only in the early 1970s, ‘peer review’ has become a powerful rhetorical concept in modern academic discourse, tasked with ensuring the reliability and reputation of scholarly research. Its origins have commonly been dated to the foundation of the Philosophical Transactions in 1665, or to early learned societies more generally, with little consideration of the intervening historical development. It is clear from our analysis o…
Conscientious Workmen or Booksellers' Hacks? The Professional Identities of Science Writers in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Existing scholarship on the debates over expertise in mid-nineteenth-century Britain has demonstrated the importance of popular writings on the sciences to definitions of scientific authority. Yet while men of science might position themselves in opposition to the stereotype of the merely popular writer, the self-identity of the popular writer remained ambiguous. This essay examines the careers of William Charles Linnaeus Martin (1798-1864) and T…
The reception of William Paley's Natural Theology in the University of Cambridge
In order to pass the BA examination, it was, also, necessary to get up Paley's Evidences of Christianity , and his Moral Philosophy . This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the Evidences with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his Natural Theology gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of th…
Journals, learned societies and money: Philosophical Transactions , ca . 1750–1900
This paper investigates the finances of the Royal Society and its Philosophical Transactions, showing that in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries journal publishing was a drain on funds rather than a source of income. Even without any expectation of profit, the costs of producing Transactions nevertheless had to be covered, and the way in which this was done reflected the changing financial situation of the Society. An examination of the…
Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain
Aileen Fyfe's Science and Salvation explores the vibrant world of popular science publishing in Victorian Britain, demonstrating how religious belief shaped the production, dissemination, and consumption of scientific knowledge. Focusing on the Religious Tract Society (RTS), a leading evangelical publisher, Fyfe reveals how the RTS used science to promote its vision of a divinely ordered universe and a morally responsible Christian citizenry. The…
Reading Children's Books in Late Eighteenth-Century Dissenting Families
The eighteenth-century commodifications of childhood and the sciences overlapped in the production of science books for children. This article examines a children's book written by two members of the Unitarian circle around Warrington Academy in the 1790s, and contrasts it with a Church of England work. The analysis reveals the extent to which religious differences could affect parental attitudes to the natural world, reason, the uses of the scie…
Publishing and the classics: Paley’s Natural theology and the nineteenth-century scientific canon
Managing the Growth of Peer Review at the Royal Society Journals, 1865-1965
This article examines the evolution of peer review and the modern editorial processes of scholarly journals by analyzing a novel data set derived from the Royal Society’s archives and covering 1865-1965, that is, the historical period in which refereeing (not yet known as peer review) became firmly established. Our analysis reveals how the Royal Society’s editorial processes coped with both an increasing reliance on refereeing and a growth in sub…
Ladies, Gentlemen, and Scientific Publication at the Royal Society, 1945-1990
This paper extends the scholarship on gender and scientific authorship by exploring women’s involvement in editorial decision-making. Prior to 1945, women scientists could submit their work to the journals of the Royal Society, but they were excluded from all editorial and evaluation roles: such gate-keeping roles were reserved for Fellows of the Society. We draw upon the Society’s archive to examine the experiences of female authors, referees, a…
Commerce and Philanthropy: The Religious Tract Society and the Business of Publishing
Peer reviewed
Self-help for learned journals: Scientific societies and the commerce of publishing in the 1950s
In the decades after the Second World War, learned society publishers struggled to cope with the expanding output of scientific research and the increased involvement of commercial publishers in the business of publishing research journals. Could learned society journals survive economically in the postwar world, against this competition? Or was the emergence of a sales-based commercial model of publishing - in contrast to the traditional model o…
Uncomfortable departments: British historians of science and the importance of disciplinary communities
This paper explores issues around disciplinary belonging and academic identity. Historians of science learn to think and practise like historians in terms of research practice, but this paper shows that British historians of science do not think of themselves as belonging to the disciplinary community of historians. They may be confident that they do history, but they insist that there is a distinction between historians and historians of science…
The reception of William Paley's Natural Theology in the University of Cambridge
In order to pass the BA examination, it was, also, necessary to get up Paley's Evidences of Christianity , and his Moral Philosophy . This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the Evidences with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his Natural Theology gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of th…
Reading Children's Books in Late Eighteenth-Century Dissenting Families
The eighteenth-century commodifications of childhood and the sciences overlapped in the production of science books for children. This article examines a children's book written by two members of the Unitarian circle around Warrington Academy in the 1790s, and contrasts it with a Church of England work. The analysis reveals the extent to which religious differences could affect parental attitudes to the natural world, reason, the uses of the scie…
Publishing and the classics: Paley’s Natural theology and the nineteenth-century scientific canon
Telling stories
In the beginning, there was Dava Sobel and Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (1998). Others followed, in a veritable flood which D. P. Miller recently dubbed the ‘Sobel Effect’. Academic historians of science have been concerned by this flood, partly because people other than them are (presumably) making money out of ‘their’ subject, but also because of the ways it might affect the p…
Commerce and Philanthropy: The Religious Tract Society and the Business of Publishing
Peer reviewed
Victorian publishing
Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain
Aileen Fyfe's Science and Salvation explores the vibrant world of popular science publishing in Victorian Britain, demonstrating how religious belief shaped the production, dissemination, and consumption of scientific knowledge. Focusing on the Religious Tract Society (RTS), a leading evangelical publisher, Fyfe reveals how the RTS used science to promote its vision of a divinely ordered universe and a morally responsible Christian citizenry. The…
Dissecting Dissent
Conscientious Workmen or Booksellers' Hacks? The Professional Identities of Science Writers in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Existing scholarship on the debates over expertise in mid-nineteenth-century Britain has demonstrated the importance of popular writings on the sciences to definitions of scientific authority. Yet while men of science might position themselves in opposition to the stereotype of the merely popular writer, the self-identity of the popular writer remained ambiguous. This essay examines the careers of William Charles Linnaeus Martin (1798-1864) and T…
Darwin and human origins
Restricted accessMoreSectionsView Full TextView PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Cite this article Fyfe Aileen 2010Darwin and human originsNotes Rec. R. Soc.64307–309http://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2009.0078SectionRestricted accessBook reviewsDarwin and human origins Aileen Fyfe Aileen Fyfe [email protected] Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by t…
The Religious Tract Society
The Religious Tract Society is an evangelical, interdenominational Protestant organization founded in London in 1799. Its original aim was to produce and distribute religious tracts to convert the working classes of Great Britain to evangelical Christianity. Within forty years, the Society was publishing tracts in over a hundred languages for use in mission fields all over the world, as well as publishing religious books and periodicals for sale …
Uncomfortable departments: British historians of science and the importance of disciplinary communities
This paper explores issues around disciplinary belonging and academic identity. Historians of science learn to think and practise like historians in terms of research practice, but this paper shows that British historians of science do not think of themselves as belonging to the disciplinary community of historians. They may be confident that they do history, but they insist that there is a distinction between historians and historians of science…
Years of Scientific Periodicals
Peer reviewed
Journals, learned societies and money: Philosophical Transactions , ca . 1750–1900
This paper investigates the finances of the Royal Society and its Philosophical Transactions, showing that in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries journal publishing was a drain on funds rather than a source of income. Even without any expectation of profit, the costs of producing Transactions nevertheless had to be covered, and the way in which this was done reflected the changing financial situation of the Society. An examination of the…
Making public ahead of print: Meetings and publications at the Royal Society, 1752–1892
This essay examines the interplay between the meetings and publications of learned scientific societies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when journals were an established but not yet dominant form of scholarly communication. The ‘making public’ of research at meetings, long before actual ‘publication’ in society periodicals, enabled a complex of more or less formal sites of communication and discussion ahead of print. Using two cas…
The Royal Society and the Prehistory of Peer Review, 1665–1965
Despite being coined only in the early 1970s, ‘peer review’ has become a powerful rhetorical concept in modern academic discourse, tasked with ensuring the reliability and reputation of scholarly research. Its origins have commonly been dated to the foundation of the Philosophical Transactions in 1665, or to early learned societies more generally, with little consideration of the intervening historical development. It is clear from our analysis o…
Ladies, Gentlemen, and Scientific Publication at the Royal Society, 1945-1990
This paper extends the scholarship on gender and scientific authorship by exploring women’s involvement in editorial decision-making. Prior to 1945, women scientists could submit their work to the journals of the Royal Society, but they were excluded from all editorial and evaluation roles: such gate-keeping roles were reserved for Fellows of the Society. We draw upon the Society’s archive to examine the experiences of female authors, referees, a…
Managing the Growth of Peer Review at the Royal Society Journals, 1865-1965
This article examines the evolution of peer review and the modern editorial processes of scholarly journals by analyzing a novel data set derived from the Royal Society’s archives and covering 1865-1965, that is, the historical period in which refereeing (not yet known as peer review) became firmly established. Our analysis reveals how the Royal Society’s editorial processes coped with both an increasing reliance on refereeing and a growth in sub…
Self-help for learned journals: Scientific societies and the commerce of publishing in the 1950s
In the decades after the Second World War, learned society publishers struggled to cope with the expanding output of scientific research and the increased involvement of commercial publishers in the business of publishing research journals. Could learned society journals survive economically in the postwar world, against this competition? Or was the emergence of a sales-based commercial model of publishing - in contrast to the traditional model o…
From philanthropy to business: The economics of Royal Society journal publishing in the twentieth century
Scientific journal publishing has become a lucrative enterprise, for commercial firms and (some) society publishers alike; but it was not always thus. The Royal Society is the publisher of the world's longest-running scientific journal, and for most of the history of the Philosophical Transactions , its publication was a severe drain on the Society's finances. This paper uses the rich archives of the Royal Society to investigate the economic tran…
The Business of Isis since the 1950s
Funding: Arts & Humanities Research Council AH/K001841
Visualising Historical University Records to Explore the Colonial Connections of the Students and Alumni of the University of St Andrews, 1700–1897
This paper uses the historical student records of the University of St Andrews to demonstrate how an exploration of the student community can contribute to our understanding of the ways UK universities have been implicated in British colonial/imperial activities. It also contributes to the investigation of student origins, international student mobility and alumni career patterns. Using digital technology, we identified 901 individuals who came f…
Political science (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (12 works) · History (8 works) · History of Science and Natural History (8 works) · Publishing (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Media studies (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · History (6 works)