1900 – Popular science as the work of Lucifer: The tensions between ‘enlightenment of the people’ and ‘popular science’ in Denmark

1. The cultural landscape

From the 1870s, the liberal opposition to the conservative government in Denmark included two very different cultural movements. On the one hand, a group of urban intellectuals inspired by the literary critic Georg Brandes, who had called for a so-called Modern Breakthrough in Danish culture and literature in 1871, advocated free thought, rationalism, positivism and naturalism. Among these intellectuals were the botanist and later renowned author J.P. Jacobsen, who translated Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and Descent of Man into Danish in the early 1870s, and the philosopher Harald Høffding, who popularised the ideas of Darwin, Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill through translations, articles and lectures. In 1882, this group gained an institutional stronghold by establishing the radical student society Studentersamfundet in the capital Copenhagen, which harboured the only university in Denmark at that time. The activities of the society included public enlightenment and popularisation of science primarily aimed at the working classes in Copenhagen. Thus, the student society organised evening lectures for workers and launched a book series that included a work by Høffding on Darwin. In general, the student society gave high priority to natural science, which was regarded as an allied in its struggle against the established religious and political order. This radical movement in the late nineteenth century was not unique to Denmark. It was part of a general European rise of an academic class of liberal and positivist educators, who were critical towards the conservative order and called for liberalism, rationalism, modernism, progressivism and even sometimes atheism (Hjermitslev, 2010).

On the other hand, however, a uniquely Danish (and to some extent Norwegian and Swedish) liberal cultural movement had emerged around 1850 as a major challenge to the positivist and naturalistic agenda of the urban intellectuals. This cultural movement was inspired by the clergyman, national educator and prolific writer N.F.S. Grundtvig and had its stronghold in rural areas. The Grundtvigian movement advocated a liberal version of Lutheranism and were, like the radicals, defenders of the democratic constitution of 1849. In his writings, Grundtvig attacked, on the one hand, the established educational system, the so-called ‘school of death’ for its focus on rote learning, textbooks and exams and, on the other, the natural sciences of his day for leading to atheism. By contrast, he argued that ‘you can only learn the things you love’ and called for a ‘school for life’ that focused on enlightenment of the people through a historical-poetical formation based on knowledge of and devotion to Danish history and culture. The aim was to create educated and democratic citizens. The didactic means to reach this end was what Grundtvig coined ‘the living word’ in the form of storytelling and talks, while tests, rote learning and exams were banned. Grundtvig’s educational vision came into reality at hundreds of free schools and people’s high schools and more than a thousand lecture societies that mushroomed in the decades around 1900. In spite of Grundtvig’s reservations, the Grundtvigian schools included the natural sciences in their teachings. Indeed, the Grundtvigian educators admitted that scientific subjects might be useful to the pupils and students, but they were eager to emphasise that natural knowledge was not central to the vision of their schools, namely, the historical-poetical enlightenment and formation of the people (Hjermitslev, 2015).

2. Popular science and Lucifer

Until 1882, when the radical student society launched its lectures for workers, the Grundtvigians had more or less monopoly on the enlightenment of the people. However, gradually, the interest for science grew among the people, who witnessed technological and scientific advances – such as railroads, telegraphs, electricity and new medical treatments – in their daily lives. This meant that there was an emerging marked for popular science publications. From the 1850s, several editors and publishers had launched popular science magazines, but none of them reached beyond the educated classes. It changed in 1897, when the innovative publisher Ernst Bojesen joined forces with the radical editor Julius Schiøtt, who was one of the driving forces behind the student society’s lectures for workers. They put the weekly Frem [Forward] on the market. It soon reached the exceptionally high number of 156,000 subscribers in Scandinavia, and for the first time, literature on science reached the working classes and became a commercial success. With the rationalist motto ‘knowledge is power’ on the front page, Frem included chapters of fiction and non-fiction books – including popular science works by renowned scientists – combined with a four-page popular science magazine containing small paragraphs on science, technology and history (Figure 1). Initially, Bojesen and Schiøtt had planned to devote all of the pages to popular science, but they decided to include fiction when one of their employees argued, ‘It is very well with all that popular science, but here must also be something for the wives and children’ (Hjermitslev, 2017: 254; Andersen and Hjermitslev, 2009).

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Figure 1.

Front page of Frem, no. 1, October 1897.

However, not everybody was too impressed by the success of Frem. Among Grundtvigians, the commercial success of Frem was met with scepticism. The editor Laust Moltesen commented on the front page, which he thought depicted ‘a rushing athlete with a sparkling torch, a Lucifer’ (Hjermitslev, 2017: 256, all translations are mine). Thus, according to Moltesen, the light that Frem brought to the people was dangerous, destructive and even diabolic. The people’s high school principal Alfred Povlsen also found it necessary to warn his fellow Grundtvigians: ‘Everywhere in Denmark, we see a youngster race with a torch in his hand shouting “knowledge is power!” Indeed, knowledge is power. Guns and bayonets is power. But power and blessing do not always go together’ (Hjermitslev, 2017: 268).

Thus, Grundtvigian commentators criticised the synthesis of rationalist ideology and commercialisation of scientific knowledge that laid the foundation of the success of Frem. They were concerned that the popularisation of natural science would lead to atheism, and that their programme of public enlightenment based on historical-poetical formation and democratic citizenship would be threatened by a rationalist concept of scientific knowledge as a means to personal success in the struggle for life. Moreover, the Grundtvigians were sceptical of academic learning which was regarded as secluded ‘dead knowledge’ unfit for the enlightenment of the people, and the idea that scientists should popularise science and sell it to the people was seen as arrogant, unethical and paternalistic. The concept of popular science was thus associated with rationalism, atheism, egoism and paternalism. In their view, enlightenment of the people was not a matter of offering a popularised version of science to the people, but rather a matter of awakening the history and culture of the people itself. Povlsen described the Grundtvigian vision this way:

From the beginning, the task of the enlightenment of the people in Denmark has been to give common man access to the richest treasures of life. And by that we do not mean – just to make it perfectly clear – popular science, but rather the highest expressions that mankind has given in word and writing, in sounds and images. (Hjermitslev, 2017: 259)

Another people’s high school principal, Jannik Lindbæk, followed this line of argument:

It is the unfading credit of the Grundtvigian people’s high school that it has believed in the right and ability of common man to take an active interest in intellectual life. It has not wanted to feed him with the crumbs which fell from the table of the scholars in the form of ‘popular science’, but invited him to the very ceremonial hall, where the historical representation of the development of mankind and the most outstanding works of poets are the tasteful courses for even the most cultivated people. (Lindbæk, 1900)

The Grundtvigian advocacy of ‘enlightenment of the people’ as a healthier and more tasteful alternative to ‘popular science’ was not just empty words. In fact, the Grundtvigian movement was the most important player in religious, cultural and educational life in rural Denmark around 1900. The movement gave birth to a specific Nordic agrarian modernity by establishing networks of communication such as journals and lecture societies and institutions such as free schools, people’s high schools, agricultural schools, colleges of education and community houses. The aim of the movement was to mobilise the people culturally and politically in line with its national, religious and liberal agenda. However, the Grundtvigians were well aware that people needed more than spiritual fodder in order to survive. Therefore, they combined their formative efforts with a vocational education of the students at the people’s high schools and the agricultural schools. Here, candidates from the Royal Agricultural College taught the students the newest results from the agricultural sciences in order to improve the competitive power of Danish agriculture. Thus, in spite of their ideological reservations against modern natural science, the widespread Grundtvigian schools played a decisive role in the diffusion of useful scientific knowledge to the rural population and thus in the rapid and exceptionally successful modernisation of rural Denmark compared to other European countries (Hjermitslev, 2015).

3. University extension

In 1899, university professors with connections to the radical student society established the University Extension Movement (Folkeuniversitetet) in Denmark. The organisers were eager to enrol lecturers with different cultural and political observations in their ranks in order to secure a broad political and public support for the initiative. Indeed, they succeeded in forming an alliance between conservative, radical and socialist educators, and initially three Grundtvigian people’s high school teachers – including ‘Denmark’s Edison’, the renowned inventor, physicist and biblical literalist Poul la Cour – agreed to deliver University Extension lectures. According to the organisers, the aim of University Extension was to offer so-called objective scientific knowledge to the people. They regarded this aim of popularising science as noble and uncontroversial (Hjermitslev, 2017).

However, many Grundtvigians remained sceptical and saw the cooperation with rationalist and positivist academics as a false alliance with freethinkers. According to most Grundtvigians, the people did not need popular science lectures from urban academics, but personal and emotional talks from rural educators that could enlighten and awaken the people. Popular science lectures were seen as paternalistic science for the people that had no connection to the Christian and national worldview of the people. When reports in 1902 revealed that a socialist lecturer had used Darwinism as a weapon against Christianity and that Georg Brandes had ridiculed the Grundtvigians by calling them ‘the faith and the past’ and the radical students and University Extension ‘the hope and the future’, the fragile alliance between radicals and Grundtvigians broke down (Hjermitslev, 2017: 270). After this time, popular science and enlightenment of the people lived more or less separate lives. In fact, it is only during the last few decades that the University Extension Movement and the Grundtvigian Movement have begun to cooperate in Denmark.

4. Conclusion

In the decades around 1900, the concepts of ‘popular science’ and ‘enlightenment of the people’ were competing and conflicting trains of thought in Danish adult education. Popular science was a contested identity marker in the cultural struggle in Denmark, where Grundtvigian educators preferred the historical and cultural enlightenment and awakening of the people to what they regarded as paternalistic and diabolic popularisation of potentially atheist natural science. By following Jonathan R. Topham’s call for historicising popular science, I have thus demonstrated the value of analysing popular science as an actors’ category. The Danish case shows that popular science is a marker of cultural identity that can be widely contested.