The next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Professor Matthew Daniel Eddy (University of Durham) who will present:

‘A Very Curious Subject’: Jane Ewbank, Public Lectures and Experimental Philosophy in Late Georgian York

This will be live on Thursday, 21 November 2024, beginning at 5.00pm GMT (6.00pm CET, 12 noon ET, 9.00am PT). The format will be a talk of 20-30 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion of half an hour.

As with recent seminars the Zoom link can be freely accessed by anyone, member of SHAC or not, by booking through the following Ticket Source link:

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/society-for-the-history-of-alchemy-and-chemistry/t-rpojrkg 

The seminar will be also accessible live on YouTube at

Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/SocietyforHistoryofAlchemyandChemistry 

‘A Very Curious Subject’: Jane Ewbank, Public Lectures and Experimental Philosophy in Late Georgian York

Matthew Daniel Eddy

In September 1809 the artists Thomas Rowlandson and Auguste Charles Pugin published a popular print depicting the audience which had recently attended the public experimental philosophy course given in London’s Surrey Institution. Every seat was full and the audience stared with anticipation at the lecturer. Notably, at least half of the attendees were women and girls.  Though historians have observed that this was a common phenomenon at the time, studies which address the motivations and reactions of female attendees to the scientific ideas presented in such lectures have received less attention. This paper sheds new light on the subject by exploring the 1804 diary entries written by Jane Ewbank of York about the lectures of the traveling experimentalists Henry Moyes and Charles Sylvester. Ewbank’s notes represent one of the fullest known handwritten accounts of a woman who attended experimental lectures during the Regency period. The entries offer noteworthy examples of how Ewbank used scribal media to process and remember scientific information through recounting experiments from the lecture and related conversations that occurred later over tea with friends.  Overall, the paper reveals how these and other instances in the diary offer insight into how women learned to connect experimental philosophy to topics ranging from climatology to vitalism.

I look forward to you joining me at the seminar.

With Best Wishes

Frank James