In his The Politics of Evolution Adrian Desmond has brilliantly demonstrated the existence of an important group of pre-Darwinian evolutionists whose lower middle class background informed their radical interpretation of Lamarckian biology while Simon Schaffer and Stephen Shapin reveal the origins of modern experimental method to lie in the context of the politics of the English Civil War in their Leviathan and the Air Pump. Historians of astronomy have tended to concentrate their attention on the period just after the turn of the century, when Einstein's theories revolutionized our understanding of the structure of the universe culminating in the concepts of the expanding universe and the big bang. But the neglected late Victorian period also contributed significantly to the formation of our modern cosmology. Due to the changing social context, astronomy was imbued with new ideological, religious, and gender significance. In ages past, humanity looked to the heavens for clues as to the meaning of important events on the planet earth.
Astrologers read the fate of individuals and nations in the signs of the zodiac.
Nineteenth century English intellectuals and the reading public were no less impressed by what astronomers saw in the skies. They debated the cosmic lessons for the structure of Victorian society to be drawn from developments in astronomy. This study will ideally provide the reader with an in-depth picture of the various factions vying for power within the astronomical community in the late Victorian period, their own distinct concept of what constitutes valid scientific knowledge and how this concept was shaped by the religious, gendered, and ideological dimensions of their thought which linked them to the broader culture and society in which they lived.