History of Science
Answer question one question one from Section A question one Section A and three Section A three questions chosen from Section B three Section B
SECTION A
1 Is the history of science the history of great men?
SECTION B
2 ‘Astrology was what made astronomy into a “physical” science.’ Discuss.
3 ‘The mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth century had as many important critics as it had
supporters.’ Do you agree?
4 Either (a) What, if anything, was “the Newtonian synthesis”?
Or (b) Eighteenth-century natural philosophers were just filling in the blanks left by Newton.
Do you agree?
5 How did the institutions that supported natural knowledge change between 1600 and 1750?
6 ‘Anton Mesmer was a serious practitioner of natural philosophy and “animal magnetism” was a
reasonable theory by the standards of the 1780s.’ Discuss.
7 The period from 1790 to 1830 is often identified as a time of major transformation in the
physical, life and medical sciences. What changed, and why?
8 Either (a) What led Darwin to the principle of evolution by natural selection? How was his
theory different from earlier theories of organic evolution?
Or (b) ‘Darwin + Mendel = The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis.’ Do you agree?
9 By the end of the nineteenth century, European governments were paying large numbers of
scientists to do research in laboratories. How and why did this come about?
10 How did Freud construct a science out of the private lives of the Viennese bourgeoisie?
11 Either (a) Einstein’s answer in 1905 was ‘special relativity’. What had been the questions?
Or (b) The word ‘statistics’ originated in the word ‘state’. What is the historical significance of
this?
12 Either (a) In what way was the Manhattan Project important for the development of the
sciences during and after World War II?
Or (b) ‘Life is basically an affair of molecules.’ (G.W. GRAY, Scientific American, 1951)
Does the history of the biomedical sciences in the twentieth century support this view?