“With the Practiced Eye of a Deaf Person”: Harriet Martineau, Deafness and the Scientificity of Social Knowledge

The paper explains the important role played by Harriet Martineau in the scientization of British politics and consequently in the development of Victorian Social Science. I suggest that there is much we can learn about the scientificity of social knowledge from the relationship between Martineau’s deafness, her career as a social investigator and a reporter, and her reflections about the practice of social science. Because Martineau was a...