As a scientist, I found Prof. Laura Snyder's TED talk fascinating. I suspect her narrative on the history of science will have wide appeal, which is why Im sharing it here as a blog post rather than tweet.
Prof. Laura Synder is a Fulbright Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at St. John's University. In her talk, she illuminates to me and I suspect to you as well that the word "scientist" was shockingly first used in 1833, not that long ago! We owe its origins to a poet's inquisitiveness. Ultimately, it was the scientist William Whewell who coined the term scientist in response to the poet's plea that "natural philosophers" upgrade the name of their profession. How could it be that the word scientist was invented so recently?
She gives flesh to four Cambridge University students who in 1812 formed the "Philosophical Breakfast Club" to talk about the state of science in Britain and the world. In ushering in a new scientific revolution that even reached to Charles Darwin, the Philosophical Breakfast Club rapturously changed science. She also reminds us loud and clear that "science is not just for scientists". These six words spoken at the end of her talk resonate boldly with me. They are an anthem for science communication and outreach and for social media platforms like Twitter and Blogging that build bridges between scientists and those interested in science.
And for those that prefer reading over watching, here is Laura Snyder's TED talk transposed to text. Ive highlighted in blue some key sections that stand out to me.
"I'd like you
to come back with me for a moment to the 19th century, specifically to June 24,
1833. The British Association for the Advancement of Science is holding its
third meeting at the University of Cambridge. It's the first night of the
meeting, and a confrontation is about to take place that will change science
forever.
An elderly,
white-haired man stands up. The members of the Association are shocked to
realize that it's the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who hadn't even left his
house in years until that day. They're even more shocked by what he says.
"You must
stop calling yourselves natural philosophers."
Coleridge felt
that true philosophers like himself pondered the cosmos from their armchairs.
They were not mucking around in the fossil pits or conducting messy experiments
with electrical piles like the members of the British Association.
The crowd grew
angry and began to complain loudly. A young Cambridge scholar named William
Whewell stood up and quieted the audience. He politely agreed that an appropriate
name for the members of the association did not exist.
"If
'philosophers' is taken to be too wide and lofty a term," he said,
"then, by analogy with 'artist,' we may form 'scientist.'" This was
the first time the word scientist was uttered in public, only 179 years ago.
I first found
out about this confrontation when I was in graduate school, and it kind of blew
me away. I mean, how could the word scientist not have existed until 1833? What
were scientists called before? What had changed to make a new name necessary
precisely at that moment? Prior to this meeting, those who studied the natural
world were talented amateurs. Think of the country clergyman or squire
collecting his beetles or fossils, like Charles Darwin, for example, or, the
hired help of a nobleman, like Joseph Priestley, who was the literary companion
to the Marquis of Lansdowne when he discovered oxygen. After this, they were
scientists, professionals with a particular scientific method, goals, societies
and funding.
Much of this
revolution can be traced to four men who met at Cambridge University in 1812:
Charles Babbage, John Herschel, Richard Jones and William Whewell. These were
brilliant, driven men who accomplished amazing things. Charles Babbage, I think
known to most TEDsters, invented the first mechanical calculator and the first
prototype of a modern computer. John Herschel mapped the stars of the southern
hemisphere, and, in his spare time, co-invented photography. I'm sure we could
all be that productive without Facebook or Twitter to take up our time. Richard
Jones became an important economist who later influenced Karl Marx. And Whewell
not only coined the term scientist, as well as the words anode, cathode and
ion, but spearheaded international big science with his global research on the
tides. In the Cambridge winter of 1812 and 1813, the four met for what they
called philosophical breakfasts. They talked about science and the need for a
new scientific revolution. They felt science had stagnated since the days of the
scientific revolution that had happened in the 17th century. It was time for a
new revolution, which they pledged to bring about, and what's so amazing about
these guys is, not only did they have these grandiose undergraduate dreams, but
they actually carried them out, even beyond their wildest dreams. And I'm going
to tell you today about four major changes to science these men made.
About 200
years before, Francis Bacon and then, later, Isaac Newton, had proposed an
inductive scientific method. Now that's a method that starts from observations
and experiments and moves to generalizations about nature called natural laws,
which are always subject to revision or rejection should new evidence arise.
However, in 1809, David Ricardo muddied the waters by arguing that the science
of economics should use a different, deductive method. The problem was that an
influential group at Oxford began arguing that because it worked so well in
economics, this deductive method ought to be applied to the natural sciences too.
The members of the philosophical breakfast club disagreed. They wrote books and
articles promoting inductive method in all the sciences that were widely read
by natural philosophers, university students and members of the public. Reading
one of Herschel's books was such a watershed moment for Charles Darwin that he
would later say, "Scarcely anything in my life made so deep an impression
on me. It made me wish to add my might to the accumulated store of natural
knowledge." It also shaped Darwin's scientific method, as well as that
used by his peers. [Science for the public good]
Previously, it
was believed that scientific knowledge ought to be used for the good of the
king or queen, or for one's own personal gain. For example, ship captains
needed to know information about the tides in order to safely dock at ports.
Harbormasters would gather this knowledge and sell it to the ship captains. The
philosophical breakfast club changed that, working together. Whewell's
worldwide study of the tides resulted in public tide tables and tidal maps that
freely provided the harbormasters' knowledge to all ship captains. Herschel
helped by making tidal observations off the coast of South Africa, and, as he
complained to Whewell, he was knocked off the docks during a violent high tide
for his trouble. The four men really helped each other in every way. They also
relentlessly lobbied the British government for the money to build Babbage's
engines because they believed these engines would have a huge practical impact
on society. In the days before pocket calculators, the numbers that most
professionals needed -- bankers, insurance agents, ship captains, engineers —
were to be found in lookup books like this, filled with tables of figures.
These tables were calculated using a fixed procedure over and over by part-time
workers known as -- and this is amazing -- computers, but these calculations
were really difficult. I mean, this nautical almanac published the lunar
differences for every month of the year. Each month required 1,365
calculations, so these tables were filled with mistakes. Babbage's difference
engine was the first mechanical calculator devised to accurately compute any of
these tables. Two models of his engine were built in the last 20 years by a
team from the Science Museum of London using his own plans. This is the one now
at the Computer History Museum in California, and it calculates accurately. It
actually works. Later, Babbage's analytical engine was the first mechanical
computer in the modern sense. It had a separate memory and central processor.
It was capable of iteration, conditional branching and parallel processing, and
it was programmable using punched cards, an idea Babbage took from Jacquard's
loom. Tragically, Babbage's engines never were built in his day because most
people thought that non-human computers would have no usefulness for the
public. [New scientific institutions]
Founded in
Bacon's time, the Royal Society of London was the foremost scientific society
in England and even in the rest of the world. By the 19th century, it had
become a kind of gentleman's club populated mainly by antiquarians, literary
men and the nobility. The members of the philosophical breakfast club helped
form a number of new scientific societies, including the British Association.
These new societies required that members be active researchers publishing
their results. They reinstated the tradition of the Q&A after scientific
papers were read, which had been discontinued by the Royal Society as being
ungentlemanly. And for the first time, they gave women a foot in the door of
science. Members were encouraged to bring their wives, daughters and sisters to
the meetings of the British Association, and while the women were expected to
attend only the public lectures and the social events like this one, they began
to infiltrate the scientific sessions as well. The British Association would
later be the first of the major national science organizations in the world to
admit women as full members. [External funding for science]
Up to the 19th
century, natural philosophers were expected to pay for their own equipment and
supplies. Occasionally, there were prizes, such as that given to John Harrison
in the 18th century, for solving the so-called longitude problem, but prizes
were only given after the fact, when they were given at all. On the advice of
the philosophical breakfast club, the British Association began to use the
extra money generated by its meetings to give grants for research in astronomy,
the tides, fossil fish, shipbuilding, and many other areas. These grants not
only allowed less wealthy men to conduct research, but they also encouraged
thinking outside the box, rather than just trying to solve one pre-set
question. Eventually, the Royal Society and the scientific societies of other
countries followed suit, and this has become -- fortunately it's become -- a
major part of the scientific landscape today.
So the
philosophical breakfast club helped invent the modern scientist. That's the
heroic part of their story. There's a flip side as well. They did not foresee
at least one consequence of their revolution. They would have been deeply
dismayed by today's disjunction between science and the rest of culture. It's
shocking to realize that only 28 percent of American adults have even a very
basic level of science literacy, and this was tested by asking simple questions
like, "Did humans and dinosaurs inhabit the Earth at the same time?"
and "What proportion of the Earth is covered in water?" Once scientists
became members of a professional group, they were slowly walled off from the
rest of us. This is the unintended consequence of the revolution that started
with our four friends.
Charles Darwin
said, "I sometimes think that general and popular treatises are almost as
important for the progress of science as original work." In fact,
"Origin of Species" was written for a general and popular audience,
and was widely read when it first appeared. Darwin knew what we seem to have
forgotten, that science is not only for scientists."
Thank you.
