Science, Providence, and Progress at the Great Exhibition

Bibliographic Data

ID4175091
AuthorsGeoffrey Cantor (0000-0003-2344-5814, University College London, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume103
Issue3
Pages439-459
Publication date2012-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/667968
PMID23286186
OpenAlexW2322428299
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited8

The Great Exhibition of 1851 is generally interpreted as a thoroughly secular event that celebrated progress in science, technology, and industry. In contrast to this perception, however, the exhibition was viewed by many contemporaries as a religious event of considerable importance. Although some religious commentators were highly critical of the exhibition and condemned the display of artifacts in the Crystal Palace as giving succor to materialism, others incorporated science and technology into their religious frameworks. Drawing on sermons, tracts, and the religious periodical press, this essay pays close attention to the ways in which science and technology were endowed with providentialist significance and particularly examines the notion of human progress used by a number of Christian writers, especially Congregationalists, who set scientific and technological progress within a teleological religious perspective. This discussion sheds fresh light not only on the Great Exhibition itself but also on the deployment of natural theology in mid-nineteenth-century Britain

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Event (particle physics) · Exhibition · Materialism · Natural (archaeology) · Perspective (graphical) · Sociology · Teleology · Visual arts · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Natural History · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub