Species, Serpents, Spirits, and Skulls: Science at the Margins in the Victorian Age

Science permeates nearly every aspect of our lives, and yet, as current debates over intelligent design, the causes of global warming, and alternative health practices indicate, the question of how to distinguish science from pseudoscience remains a difficult one. To address this question. Sherrie Lynne Lyons draws on four examples from the nineteenth century-sea serpent investigations, spirituahsm, phrenology, and Darwin's theory of evolution. Each attracted the interest of prominent scientists as well as the general public, yet three remained at the edges of scientific respectability while the fourth, evolutionary theory, although initially regarded as scientific heresy, ultimately became the new scientific orthodoxy.

Sherrie Lynne Lyons is Assistant Professor at the Center for Distance Learning of Empire State College, State University of New York. She is author of Thomas Henry Huxley: The Evolution of a Scientist.