SECTION A
1. “Change in the sciences has been driven more by theoretical than by
practical innovations.” Assess this claim.
2. When did modern science begin?
SECTION B
3. What did natural philosophers and physicians learn from books that they
could not learn from experience between 1500 and 1700?
4. “Throughout the scientific circles of western Europe in the first half of the
seventeenth century we can observe what appears to be a spontaneous
movement towards a mechanical conception of nature.” (R.S. Westfall) Why did
any seventeenth century natural philosophers adopt the mechanical
philosophy?
5. “To discourse of God from the appearances of things, does certainly belong
to Natural Philosophy.” Discuss the relation between religion and science in
Newton’s natural philosophy.
6. Why was there public support for the work of natural philosophers during the
eighteenth century?
7. To what extent was Charles Darwin’s work and career typical of British
science in the period?
8. How and why did theories about the cause of disease change between the
mid-19th and the early 20th centuries?
9. “Pathological anatomy around 1800 and bacteriology around 1900 were
much the same, except that in the latter disease entered the body from
outside.” Assess this claim.
10. What objections to scientific and technological development were raised in
the 1960s and 70s? Why did they arise?
11. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of describing change in the life and
medical sciences since 1900 as “molecularisation”.
12. In 1945, the White House proclaimed that the atom bomb was “the greatest
achievement of organised science in history.” Was that true then, and is it still
true now?