Sciences in Transition: Renaissance to Enlightenment
You should answer four questions in total. Answer one question from
Section A and three questions from Section B. All questions carry equal
weighting.
Begin each answer on a separate sheet.
Write legibly and on only one side of the paper.
Answers must be tied up in separate bundles, marked 1, 2, 3, etc.
according to the number of the question.
Attach a completed coversheet to each bundle and complete a master
coversheet listing all questions attempted. It is essential that you write
your examination number and not your name on the coversheet and on
each bundle.
You may not start to read the questions printed on the subsequent
pages of this question paper until instructed to do so by the
invigilator.
Page 2 of 2
SECTION A
1. What was the effect of natural theology on the development of natural
knowledge in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe?
2. Did travel change natural knowledge between 1600 and 1800?
3. What was the greatest change in natural philosophy between 1600 and
1800?
SECTION B
4. Did increasing observational accuracy in the production of visual images
revolutionise early modern studies of nature?
5. Why were early modern natural philosophers interested in occult
qualities?
6. How did changing views of technology affect early modern natural
philosophy?
7. What was the difference between a natural philosopher and an
experimental philosopher in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?
8. Why did early modern naturalists exchange specimens?
9. Did Newtonianism change during the Enlightenment?
10. Was the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution a major turning point in
the historical development of science and society?
11. Why was classification of living beings controversial in the eighteenth
century?
12. How did the institutions of natural history shape naturalists’ practice and
credibility in the late eighteenth century?