The X-Men and their networks of power
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The X‑Men and their networks of power Ruth Barton: The X Club: power and authority in Victorian science. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018, 604pp, $55.00 HB Heather Ellis1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
The X Club: Power and Authority in Victorian Science by Ruth Barton is a highly anticipated and very well-researched account of the formation, rise to power, dominance and decline of what has been called the ‘most powerful coterie in late-Victorian science’ (7). Drawing on a rich array of archival sources, including diaries and personal correspondence, the story of the nine friends who made up the dining club—George Busk, Edward Frankland, Thomas Hirst, Joseph Hooker, T.H. Huxley, John Lubbock, Herbert Spencer, William Spottiswoode and John Tyndall—is told in meticulous detail. Yet, the book is more than a story of the X Club members; Barton gives deserved attention to a wide range of previously neglected collaborators, members of what she terms the wider ‘X-network’ including, crucially, nonscientific actors from the worlds of rational dissent, liberal theology and the universities. In so doing, we are able to understand, more clearly than ever before, the complex ways in which members of the X Club formed part of a wider cultural elite in mid-to-late nineteenth-century England. The first three chapters (comprising Part One) focus on the origins and ambitions of the Club, considering the backgrounds and early careers of the individual members, and their broader networks of collaboration and patronage. Part Two examines the X Club in its established form with three more chapters focusing respectively on the Club’s plans for organising science, involving government and public money in science education and research; and the ways in which they sought to claim cultural authority. The main body of the book is topped and tailed with an Introduction which presents the X Club, its members, the historiography and the aims of the book and a Conclusion seeking to identify distinct phases in the development and decline of the Club as well as key aspects of its programme and ambitions. Barton’s central arguments are that scientific authority should be understood as a product of the interaction of inherited social status (birth) and scientific talent; that promoting the authority and independence of scientific men were the chief aims of the X Club; and * Heather Ellis [email protected] 1
School of Education, University of Sheffield, 241 Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2GW, UK
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that scientific naturalism should be thought of as a ‘project’ through which members sought naturalistic explanations for phenomena rather than as an explicit ‘doctrine’ (20). Moreover, Barton is explicit from the start about her rejection of what she terms the ‘heroic mode’ of historical writing. She rightly highlights the inadequacy of a conception of historical causation which asserts that ‘a few men changed the world’ (8). Instead, she seeks to underline the limitations of the X Club’s power and influen
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