Specimen paper for 2021
Answer one question from Section A and three questions chosen from Section B.
SECTION A
1. What consequences did European global expansion have for the history of
science?
2. Which, historically, played the more significant role in the expansion of science,
technology, and medicine: industry or the state?
SECTION B
3. Compare and contrast the ways in which knowledge of the natural world was
made by physicians and natural philosophers in early modern Europe.
4. Did experimental philosophy displace the magical and occult arts in the
seventeenth century?
5. How did instruments shape the development of early modern science?
6. Is ‘The Age of Discovery’ a good label for the eighteenth century?
7. What effect did the French Revolution have on the development of the natural
sciences?
8. What significance did the establishment of laboratories in the physical sciences
hold for imperial power during the 19th century?
9. Why did bacteriology emerge when and where it did?
10. Who (or what) in the twentieth century wanted to be considered nuclear, and
why?
11. What roles did experts play in ‘development’ (as in ‘economic development’ or
‘international development’) in the twentieth century?
12. It is widely thought that by the 1990s genetic studies showed race has no
biological meaning. How and why has this view been challenged since then?