Setting aside any question of ‘faith and doubt’, superficially associated with the history of the mid-nineteenth century, there was as much a tendency as ever during that period for people to look heavenwards with their questions. The author of an 1856 article in Chambers's Journal noted that:

If anything characterizes nineteenth-century attitudes towards science, it is its increasing popularization by just such a plethora of books and discussions, to say nothing of the enthusiasm of writers and publishers such as Robert Chambers himself. The scale of space attracted a readership negotiating its way between traditional biblical motifs, and models that corresponded with emerging astronomical data, and it is unsurprising to find that in his own popularizing volume, Chambers expressed one in terms of the other.

The author of the above Chambers's article, however, correctly identified a trend among popularizers during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Science writers and their readers shifted their attention beyond the Earth beneath their feet and into space, our satellite, the neighbouring planets, and what might be found there.