History of Science
SECTION A
1 How has the concept of scientific evidence changed since 1500?
2 Does science need heroes?
SECTION B
3 Either (a) ‘All science, when it ceases to be merely descriptive, is basically a
study of motion and change.’ Is this an accurate description of natural
philosophy in early modern Europe?
Or (b) What roles did craftsmen and magicians play in the study of nature
before 1800?
4 Either (a) What was new about medicine between 1500 and 1700?
Or (b) ‘In the decades around 1800 medicine had to become scientific in
order to progress.’ Discuss.
5 According to Cartesians, ‘The mind has no sex’. Discuss.
6 Was there a ‘second scientific revolution’ in Europe between 1789 and 1848?
7 What was the relationship between biology and political economy in
nineteenth-century Britain?
8 Did the microscope replace the stethoscope in nineteenth-century medicine?
9 Why did the special theory of relativity emerge from the problem of
simultaneity that confronted physicists and engineers in late nineteenth-century
Europe?
10 Account for the changing scale of science in the twentieth century.
11 How, after World War II, did a new politics of race and a new biomedicine
change sickle-cell anaemia?
PLEASE TURN OVER/
2
12. Evaluate the historical significance of psychiatric drug technologies for
understanding the ‘normal’ person.