The Roebuck - though I took this photo last year...I arrived in London from Manchester this afternoon. The conference was great, but exhausting, so it was nice to relax on the train. I was in first class (only because it was cheaper than standard) and it was nice and quiet, until we got to Birmingham New Street, which was only halfway through the four-hour journey, unfortunately. I did a bit of work on the train, but was feeling a little motion sick, so I finished reading my book instead – The Ghost Writer, by John Harwood.
After arriving in London, I unpacked a bit and then had a little rest. I’ve stuffed up the one Su Doku puzzle twice now. It’s only “difficult”, not even “fiendish”! I don’t know what the problem is. Must be tired.
As I said, the conference was busy but enjoyable. On Thursday morning I had to go shopping for an outfit to wear for my presentation. After much searching, I found a nice top in Oasis (love that shop!) and then a lovely black skirt in the Coast section of Debenham’s. I also bought a cable to connect my laptop to the network in the college, but didn’t manage to sort out access until lunchtime on Friday. I took the bus back to Hulme Hall instead of walking, because my feet were killing me.
In the afternoon, I skipped the EGM to have a rest and a nap. I had trouble getting up, so I was a little late for the first session – Cultures of Domestic Chemistry. The papers were quite interesting – looking at interactions of chemistry with everyday life, such as textbooks teaching chemistry through simple procedures like making a cup of tea; chemistry and the ‘science’ of fashion; and the marketing of toy chemistry sets. After that was dinner, where I met Eleanor, who is doing a PhD (practical mathematics in the 16th century) at Oxford; Shana, who is from Toronto, teaches for a US university online, but is based in London; and Martha, who is at the University of Toronto. Afterwards was the plenary lecture given by John Pickstone, from the University of Manchester. After that I ate some chocolate (bad, but it was so good – from Hotel Chocolat) and went to bed early.
Friday morning at breakfast I met a guy called Michael Hawkins who works for the Newton Project (IT and history of science!) and on Thomas Willis, a 17th-century physician. He was very interesting, not least because he was interested in hearing my paper. I went to a session on Darwinism – interesting to a point – and then to one on chemistry, which I left early to work out my internet access and get ready for my presentation.
My paper was in a session called “Frameworks of Thought and Belief.” The first speaker was Sophie Weeks, formerly of the University of Leeds, and now of the University of Cambridge. She has a junior research fellowship with one of the colleges (something I’ll be applying for in the next few years). Sophie works on Francis Bacon, and relations between his political philosophy and natural philosophy. The speaker after me was French. He had a very strong accent and spoke very fast, so I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying. That was a shame, because it seemed quite interesting. There was one quotation he used which was along the lines that if the physiological body was used as an illustration for the political body, what it would show would be that there should be more government control, not less.
(This is as far as I got while writing in the Roebuck pub last Sunday night. It’s now Friday night, and I’m in another pub down the road from where I’m staying, called The Trinity.)
My paper went quite well. I find I’m not getting as nervous before these things as I used to. My paper only took 15 minutes to read, which left 10 minutes for comments and questions. Michael Hawkins, from the Newton project, asked if there was any “bad” use of natural philosophy by natural theologians who just didn’t have sufficient understanding of it. He said that there was a lot of poor use made of Thomas Willis’ writings. I wasn’t too sure, because I’m looking at people who were natural philosophers, not just people who used it. However, I know that some of the Boyle lecturers were criticised for putting up such poor arguments that the case of the deists was thought to be strengthened rather than weakened. Also Ralph Cudworth, who I was talking about in this paper, and who was, at least in some sense, a natural philosopher, was said to have “raised such strong objections against the being of a God and providence, that many think he has not answered them.” I had someone else ask me how Platonist the Cambridge Platonists (Henry More and Ralph Cudworth anyway) actually were, or in what sense they could be considered Platonists. This is a tricky one, and something I’m still working on. Overall, I think I dealt with the comments and questions quite well, and I had an interesting conversation with Michael Hawkins afterwards, which turned into a discussion of ID and the differences between the political spectrum in the US, UK and Australia.
The session after my talk (after a coffee break) was a panel discussion with four past presidents of the British Society for the History of Science. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Society, so it was a rather event filled programme. The discussion was very interesting. Each of the four past presidents spoke on a different aspect of their involvement: one on how they came to be involved in the first place; another on being president at the time of the 50th anniversary of the society; the third on being involved with the journal; and the last one… Can’t quite remember. That’s why I should take notes! After this session, we all traipsed up the road to the Manchester Museum (which I visited on my first day in Manchester) for the presidential lecture and a drinks reception in the mammals exhibition area. The current president, Frank James, spoke about putting the history of science to work, and about Faraday. I didn’t follow much of it –not sure if I was just tired, or maybe his manner of speaking and his accent. The girl next to me fell asleep. During the drinks reception I had a nice chat with Sophie Weeks (the girl who presented before me) and with Rebekah Higgitt, who I’ve seen at previous conferences, but met properly for the first time while she was in Australia a few months back when she gave a seminar in our school. I feel as though I am very slowly getting to know people and making inroads into the inner sanctums of the society. I’m having difficulty breaking into the main group of young people who are extremely involved with the society – I’m finding it a little cliquey. I guess it’s difficult when I only see these people once a year – and only three times in total so far. I guess it would be easier if I were living and working in England, and had more opportunities to be involved with the society.
BSHS presidents preparing to cut the cake. From the left: John Hedley Brooke, Geoffrey Cantor, Peter Bowler, Frank James (current president) and unfortunately I don't know the other twoDuring the reception there was also a toast to the society, followed by the cutting of the 60th anniversary cake, with all the past and present presidents who were present. Afterwards, a group of about 30 or 40 people traipsed back down the road, following someone (I don’t think we knew exactly who) that apparently knew a good curry place, though the word was that any place along the curry mile was good. A good number of us managed to cram into the upstairs section of one place. I can’t remember what I had, but it was good – rather spicy, though. I met a guy called David Muns who said he once got drunk with my PhD supervisor, and who did his Masters at the University of Sydney about 10 years ago with Nicolas Rasmussen, who I have been working for as research assistant. Small world. Sophie and I left just after we had finished eating – we were both pretty tired. I still didn’t get to bed until late – it took me quite awhile to work through the 100+ emails I’d received and catch up on blog reading!
On Saturday, I went to all the events organised by the BSHS Outreach and Education Committee. The first session was about teaching the history of science online. Graeme Gooday chaired the session, and spoke about a tutorial he’d developed to help students learn about the limitations of internet resources. Michael Hawkins talked about the Newton and Livingstone projects, and John van Whye took us through the Darwin Project website. Fantastic resources. I particularly liked Graeme’s tutorial. It takes students through a series of activities, searching for things on the web, and finding out that sources can give conflicting information, and showing that some sources are more reliable than others.
After that was a session on “Talking Objects” – writing the autobiographies of museum artefacts. The committee has run a couple of pilot events, encouraging people to write the autobiography of objects from a museum. For one of these, they had an author and lecturer in creative writing to help out, as well as having curators on hand to answer questions. The idea is to use the motivation of writing the autobiography to “interrogate” the object and to find out more about it. It’s a fairly old practise – the example that inspired the project was the Autobiography of an Electron which Graeme Gooday spoke about at last year’s conference. The group I was with wrote about a box of wooden crystal models. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it, but I did. We didn’t win the competition though. Very sad.
In the afternoon, the committee performed a role play called “Plague on the Streets” – creating a kind of courtroom scene where members of the York council questioned witnesses to try to find out whether there was plague in York, and what to do about it. The aim is for this to be performed for teenagers to teach them the history of medicine. It’s supposed to be interactive – members of the audience can ask questions of the witnesses and suggest what the council should do. It’s got a lot of potential, but the people involved tended to speak too softly and it was rather hard to hear.
Cillian Murphy, who plays the physicist Capa in SunshineAnother coffee break, and then a viewing of the movie Sunshine along with a discussion with the scientific consultant. I didn’t like the movie much. It’s sci-fi, but then all of a sudden turned into a B-grade horror flick which I wasn’t expecting and which brought back bad memories of Event Horizon. What was most striking was that the main character in the movie, a physicist (Cillian Murphy), looked remarkably like the scientific consultant (Dr Brian Cox), also a physicist. He said before the film that for him, it wasn’t about whether or not the science was accurate or feasible, but what it was like to be a scientist. I tried to watch the movie with that in mind, but I just couldn’t see it. If anyone else has seen it, I’d be interested in your thoughts. Another striking point was that the female characters were very “female” – much more emotional than the others. What we found out was that the script was written in a gender-neutral way – any character could have been played by a male or female. In fact, the first actor to be signed on was Michelle Yeoh, and she had first choice of characters. She could have been the physicist, but she chose to be the biologist who cried over the loss of her beloved oxygen-producing garden. Similarly, the astronaut played by Rose Byrne (hurrah for Australian actors!) wasn’t written to be so explicitly emotional – that’s something the actor brought out herself. Very interesting. Brian Cox spent quite a lot of time with Cillian Murphy, who learned from him what it is like to be a scientist. Cillian Murphy got to go to CERN at Geneva, and took quite an interest in particle physics - apparently even presented a paper to the Royal Society of London!
The multi-talented physicist Dr Brian Cox who was once in the band D:REAMAfter the movie, we set off on a guided tour of the main history of science and technology sights of Manchester. Unfortunately, it rained for most of the 2 hour walk. It was still very interesting. Manchester is a fascinating city – so much history. I wish I’d had more time to explore it instead of shopping for clothes, but I probably wouldn’t have found many of these places on my own.
Touring Manchester in the rainWe ended up at the Museum of Science and Industry (which I’d wanted to go to) for the conference dinner in the Power Hall. Lots of trains. The dinner also included the presentation of the award for a photography exhibition. Dinner was quite nice – four very small courses (amusingly, there was only one vegetarian meal provided, and more than one hungry vegetarian!) but no dessert. Shana and I were thinking about exploring the Curry Mile for Indian sweet shops, but once we got onto the nice warm bus, we ended up feeling pretty tired. I wasn’t really that hungry either, so I just went to bed.
Joe Cain, from the University College, London, with his winning entry in the OEC's visual image competitionSunday morning – a quick breakfast, then I skipped the last couple of sessions. The cheapest train ticket available was for the 12:03pm train, but I decided to leave even earlier than I had to, and had a nice relaxing cup of tea at the station while reading. And I got the chance to call my parents from a pay phone where my calling card actually works. And that gets me on to the train, where I started this post…
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