To celebrate the launch of our new website, the BSHS Travel Guide, we are inviting pupils from across the UK to tell us about a local place that they think is important to the history of science.

Perhaps a famous scientist lived or worked in your local area, or an important discovery was made just around the corner. Is there a site of industrial importance or a famous institution right on your doorstep? If so, tell us all about it! You can even send us up to 3 photographs you have taken or pictures that you have drawn to bring your travel guide to life.

Entries will be judged in three categories and prizes will be awarded for the winning entry in each age group: under-11, 11-14 and 15-18. The best entries will also be published on the website so that visitors from around the world can find out about the fascinating history of these scientific hotspots.

Teachers can download the HotSpots poster [pdf] for their classroom or school.

Please send your HotSpot travel guides to schoolscompetition@bshs.org.uk.

Deadline for entries is 31st DECEMBER 2011.

Competition rules:

• Entries must be no longer than 1000 words and contain no more than 3 images
• Individuals, groups of students or whole classes may enter, however schools are restricted to no more than 5 entries per school per category.
• All entries must be sent in electronic format (preferably a Word document) clearly marked with the name of the school, teacher’s contact details, names and ages of pupils.
• Due to copyright restrictions, all text and images including photographs or artwork must be original. Material reproduced from the internet or other sources will not be accepted by the judges.

A recent Outreach and Education Committee project has been the collection of songs from the history of science.

This resulted in a lyric-writing competition in 2009 (winners here), in a blog containing historic examples, and in a session at ‘Outreach Day’ at the 2010 Aberdeen conference.

In March 2012 the BSHS Outreach and Education Committee is supporting The Observatory Pinafore, which is being performed at the Corpus Playroom in Cambridge.

Resources

• A ‘Naked Scientists’ interview with Jeff Hughes given at an event at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge, on the Post-Prandial Proceedings of the Cavendish Physical Society.
• A video of Graeme Gooday and Ben Marsden performing Rankine's 'Three-Foot Rule' at the Aberdeen BSHS conference.

Astronomical Amusements is an activity developed by the Outreach and Education Committee introducing Georgian recreational astronomy. It ran at Scientriffic in Wrexham in 2008, and at an activity day at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, in 2009.

In Victorian Britain, thousands of people were turning tables. Participants at séances across the country heard long-departed voices, levitated musical instruments, and channelled strange languages, breaching supposed barriers between the natural and the supernatural, soul and matter, the known and the unknown, the quick and the dead. Well-known members of the scientific community, including co-discoverer of natural selection Alfred Russel Wallace and chemist William Crookes, were among them: active enthusiasts of spiritualism, and regular séance-goers. Others, such as Michael Faraday, were more sceptical, and denounced this popular pastime in the periodical press. Many fell somewhere in between on a spectrum of beliefs. But how were people supposed to judge what was going on, and who could be relied on for expert guidance? Was science able to determine whether the séance was real?

In ‘The Tables Turned’, the British Society for the History of Science’s ‘Strolling Players’ visit the world of Victorian spiritualism. Travelling back in time to the early 1860s, they take their audience to a meeting of a scientific society to question processes of observation, fact-making, objectivity and reasoning, as well as the relationship between expert men of science and the wider public. This highly engaging event uses film, role-play, and debate to bring key issues from the history and philosophy of science to life. A Wellcome Trust grant as well as funding and support from the BSHS was used towards the development and performance of this activity.

Performances

'The Tables Turned' was trialled at the BSHS Annual Conference in Leicester in 2009, and has been performed in full at:

• The British Science Festival in Surrey, September 2009
• The Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, May 2010 and June 2010
• The Big Bang Science and Engineering Fair, London ExCel centre, March 2011
• The Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge, March 2011

Resources

• The Tables Turned: the script (by Sabine Clarke) [pdf]
• The Tables Turned: the film
• Poster for the Guildford production [jpg]
• Poster for the Cambridge production [pdf]
• Photos from the performances

Cast and Crew

Mr Henry Boyle: Ryan Johnson (film)

Mr Arthur Brookes: Mike Brown (Leicester and Oxford); Geoff Belknap (Surrey, Oxford, London, Cambridge)

Miss Arabella Cloud: Sabine Clarke

Miss Lizzy Lightman: Melanie Keene (film)

Mr Robert Middleton: Julia Hyland

Mr James Wendell: Tom Lean

Madame Chairperson: Melanie Keene (Leicester, Surrey, Oxford, London, Cambridge); Lizzy Hunter (Oxford)

For more information about ‘The Tables Turned’, please contact outreach@bshs.org.uk

'The Business of Bodies' takes its audience to a grave-robbing trial of the late 1820s. 'Spanish Frank' has been apprehended after a moonlit chase through a churchyard, and is accused of body-snatching. The audience must act as his jury, as they hear expert witness from legal, medical, and scientific figures, and uncover the historical and social contexts of this grave anatomical trade.

Performances

The Business of Bodies was trialled at the 3 Societies Conference in Oxford, 2008, and has been performed in full at:

• The British Science Festival, Liverpool, 2008
• The Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, 2009

Resources

The Business of Bodies: the script [pdf]

The Business of Bodies: the film

[caption id="attachment_7347" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Colibri"][/caption]'Natural Mimics' is an Outreach and Education Committee project based around the life, travels, and scientific works of Henry Walter Bates. It was trialled at the 2009 Annual Conference in Leicester, and ran as an activity at the Natural History Museum in February 2010.

Resources

• Letters written at the Leicester Conference [pdf]
• Resource pack for NHM pupils [pdf]
• Letter pack for NHM pupils [pdf]

[caption id="attachment_7343" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Teams designed and built a life-size model of an iguanodon leg from galvanised wire, newspaper gauze impregnated with plaster of Paris. In the northern pilot, we were fortunate enough to have a fossilised iguanodon femur to help children calculate the size of the model leg required. The resulting models were, frankly, stunning." alt="Teams designed and built a life-size model of an iguanodon leg from galvanised wire, newspaper gauze impregnated with plaster of Paris. In the northern pilot, we were fortunate enough to have a fossilised iguanodon femur to help children calculate the size of the model leg required. The resulting models were, frankly, stunning."][/caption]The Bone Trail is an exciting schools project funded jointly by the British Society for the History of Science, Bolton Local Authority Secondary Strategy and the Manchester Museum.

A team of three educators -- one academic historian of science (Emm Barnes) and two science teachers (Peter Fowler and Alison Henning) -- designed two full days of activities for Year 9 students on the history of comparative anatomy, geology, and palaeontology. The emphasis was on teaching thinking skills, and inspiring enthusiasm in earth sciences in particular and in learning in general. Students from Westhoughton High School and the Frances Bardsley School for Girls tested the activities in May 2006. We are most grateful to the teachers in these schools for their commitment to the project.

These interdisciplinary activities encourage children to reflect on their process skills, and offer scope for teachers to cater to the full range of learning preferences. Enrichment materials are typically designed for children identified as 'gifted and talented,' but these are intended for use with all children, as we believe that every child can benefit, intellectually and socially, from the extra attention and from making connections between different subject areas.

Downloadable resources

[caption id="attachment_7342" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Edible geology"][/caption]These materials are presented in pdf format.

• The Bone Trail overview (2.6MB) Contains project contents; cover page; overview of the project; "Stepping up" (teachers' notes on thinking skills); introductory exercise for students (cross-subject connections); final exercise ("Build your own dinosaur leg"); details of further resources.
• History materials (6.8MB) Materials on the meaning of fossils; worksheets on individual investigators (Mary Anning, James Scott Bowerbank, Gideon Mantell); William Smith versus the Geological Society; geological maps over time; changing ideas on the representation and modelling of dinosaurs; dinosaurs in popular culture.
• Science materials (2.6MB) Materials on comparative anatomy; fossil formation; Charles Lyell and the Principles of Geology; "edible geology" activity (chocolate cakes and sandwiches); geological timeline activity; making sedimentary rock.

The resources can be used as they stand. If, however, you wish to register as a pilot school or museum, and receive assistance from the authors in planning delivery of the full programme, please contact outreach@bshs.org.uk.

More about the Bone Trail

Several of the project's co-ordinators led a discussion during a session at our 2006 Annual Conference, leading into a demonstration of the "edible geology" activity, as discussed in the conference report.

A piece by Emm Barnes on the Bone Trail and its implications for outreach work appears in the October 2006 issue of Viewpoint.

[caption id="attachment_7337" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Death and the City cast"][/caption] Death and the City is a roleplay exercise for young people aged 11 and older. Drawing on a real-life outbreak of plague in the city of York in 1631, the piece casts its audience in the role of city aldermen who interrogate a series of characters acted by volunteers. In doing so, they begin to uncover seventeenth-century attitudes to disease, medical practice, and the role of social standing and religion.

Death and the City was trialled at the BSHS Annual Conference in Manchester, June 2007, and has been performed in full at

• the BA Festival of Science in York, September 2007 (school groups)
• Scientriffic 2008 at the Wrexham Science Festival, March 2008 (family groups)

Resources

• Introduction to the project: context, educational objectives and format
• Death and the City: the script (as used in the York production; pdf)
• Notes on the characters (pdf)
• Handbill for the York production (pdf)
• Photos from the York event
• Interview (audio and transcript) with Sabine Clarke and James Sumner for The Naked Scientists podcast and BBC Radio shows, recorded at the 2007 BA Festival.

For more information about Death and the City, or to express interest in arranging a presentation, please contact Sabine Clarke at sabine.clarke@wuhmo.ox.ac.uk.

Click to play video from the Wrexham event: (top to bottom) Parson Grimsworth inveighs against the godless luxuries of the citizenry; Dr Brightwell promotes his philosophical nostrums; the city aldermen face up to their dilemma

Cast and crew

Alderman Lightfoot: Terence Banks (York), Sabine Clarke (Wrexham)

Alderwoman Baxter: Sabine Clarke (York), Leucha Veneer (Wrexham)

Alderman Harvey: Tom Lean

Sergeant Sharpspeare, of the City Militia: Jeff Stout (York), Julia Hyland (Wrexham)

Parson Grimsworth: James Sumner

Dr Brightwell, BA, MA, PhD, LLB, FRCP: Mike Brown

Jenny Flanders: Melanie Keene

Mrs Maria Skegswell: Fern Elsdon-Baker

Alderpersons seated in audience (York): Lizzie Hunter, Rosie Wall

Specialist make-up by Julia Hyland

Script by Terence Banks and Sabine Clarke, with revisions and ad-libs from the cast

[caption id="attachment_7335" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Participants contemplate ventriloquising an artificial leg at the 2007 Annual Conference"][/caption]What would Faraday's magnets say if asked to tell you their life story? This pilot project is investigating the creative writing of 'object autobiographies' as an educational resource in history of science.

Narratives in the voice of non-humans were used in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century education both to develop young people's powers of empathy and to communicate and popularize science to them. See for example The Autobiography of an Electron by Charles R Gibson (1911), or John Cargill Brough's carbon atom in his Fairy Tales of Science (1859).

Award-winning poet and author, Deborah Tyler-Bennett, facilitated our first pilot event on 13th March 2007, and we are grateful to the group from Chinnor U3A who took part and gave us their feedback. Object stories produced for this pilot by members of the BSHS Outreach and Education Committee can be found here:

• Download Object Stories (pdf, 115kb)

Another Object Stories session ran as part of Outreach Day at the BSHS Annual Conference in Manchester in June 2007.

We welcome opinions from educators and curators on how best to use short autobiographical narratives for teaching and interpreting museum collections: please contact us at outreach@bshs.org.uk.

The Outreach and Education Committee is pleased to announce the winners of its 2010 schools’ competition. The Prize was awarded for the best history of science essay written by an entrant into the Extended Project Qualification on ‘Perspectives on Science’, who also submitted their essay to the competition.

The winning essay, entitled ‘How big is my cake?’, was written by Andrew Hutchins from Havant College. The runners-up prize was awarded to Hannah Ryan of Peter Symonds College. Congratulations to both of our winners!

The Outreach and Education Committee is very pleased to announce that first prize in the 2010 Great Exhibitions competition has been awarded to the Museo Galileo in Florence. Second prize was won by the Thackray Museum in Leeds for their exhibition “How William Astbury’s X-Ray Vision Changed the World”. The judges would like to thank all institutions and individuals who submitted entries for the competition.

The Outreach and Education Committee are pleased to announce a new competition for public exhibitions that deal with the history of science and/or medicine.

Entrants are welcome from institutions in any country and exhibits may be permanent or temporary. Eligible exhibits must use artefacts or places of some kind and this may include buildings or locations, pictures, instruments, objects and books. Web-exhibits are eligible for the prize. The closing date is the 15th September 2010 and exhibits should still be available for viewing until the end of November 2010. The prize is £300. The winning exhibit will be the subject of a special feature in the BSHS's Viewpoint magazine. Entrants need to fill in a entrance form [Word doc]. Further details are available here [Word doc]. Enquries to outreach@bshs.org.uk.

The British Society for the History of Science Outreach and Education Committee is delighted to announce the results of its 2009 Song Competition.

In first place, winning the prize of £100, was 'The Charles Babbage Song', by Alison Adam (University of Salford).

The runners-up prizes of £50 were won by Julie Walsh (University of Cambridge) and Barry Sheils (University of Warwick) for 'Scientific Lessons in Modesty'; and Shana Worthen (Arkansas Little Rock/Canterbury Christ Church University), for 'Is it a Clock?'.

The performance category, and £50 prize, was also won by Julie Walsh and Mike Walsh, for 'Scientific Lessons in Modesty'.

The winning songs will be posted online on the OEC pages.

Many congratulations to all our winners!

Ever wondered whether 'Cholera!' would have been a more entertaining Andrew Lloyd Webber musical than 'Oliver!'? Always wanted precise zoological information from Flanders and Swann's 'Hippopotamus', or felt that 'Fly Me To The Moon' should really have provided more details about the Apollo landings? Now's your chance to put those thoughts into practice.

By entering our competition you'll be following in a fine tradition of scientific music-making to well-known melodies, from the Cambridge Cavendish Laboratory's 'Ions Mine' to the tune of 'Clementine', to a satirical celebration of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable that rewrote 'Yankee Doodle Dandy', and Tom Lehrer's tongue-twisting version of Gilbert and Sullivan in 'The Elements'.

Entries will be judged on their historical content and choice of topic, on their wit and imaginative use of language and rhyme schemes, and on their fit to the original tune.

One £100 first prize will be won, alongside two £50 runners-up prizes. We'll also be awarding two £50 prizes for the best amateur performance of a song - so why not send in an audio or video recording of you singing your entry? You can submit more than one entry, but a maximum of one prize per person in each category can be won.

How do I enter?

Pick one of the five traditional copyright-free tunes detailed below, several of which have actually been used for scientific songs, and set your own words that introduce a particular theme in the history of science. Think creatively!

• 'Clementine'
• 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'
• 'What Shall we Do with the Drunken Sailor?'
• 'O God Our Help in Ages Past'
• 'English Country Garden'

If you're having trouble getting started, then have a look at the inspirational historical examples posted online at: http://www.historyofsciencesongs.blogspot.com/

Please provide a minimum of two verses, and a maximum of eight. Don't forget the chorus!

It's fine to enter with the lyrics alone but if you would like to then please do include performance directions, suggestions for instrumentation and voices, tempi and dynamics, musical genre, etc. However, please format your entry as a text file or pdf file, not one that uses specialist music-making software.

Also, why not record a version of yourself or your friends, your band, or your choir singing the song and submit it to our supplementary competition as an audio or video file, preferably as an mp3 or mp4 file?

Send your song lyrics and performances to historyofsciencesongs@googlemail.com by FRIDAY 17 APRIL 2009. You should receive a message in reply confirming the validity of your entry within 48 hours.

Prize-winners will be announced at our Annual Conference in Leicester on Saturday 4th July 2009, and immediately thereafter on the BSHS website.

Enquiries about this competition should be sent to historyofsciencesongs@googlemail.com

Please note that by entering this competition you guarantee that your lyrics are your own original work. The BSHS will use the winning entries in our activities to bring topics in the history of science, technology and medicine to new audiences.

These details are available at:

http://www.bshs.org.uk/history-of-science-songs-2/

The Outreach and Education Committee is pleased to announce the winners of its 2008 competition 'Designing Darwin'. This prize is awarded in three age categories for original designs that best illustrate the significance of Charles Darwin's birth bicentenary and the 150th birthday of his most famous work, On the Origin of Species in 2009.

Age Category 19+

• Winner: Simon Crowhurst, University of Cambridge
  [caption id="attachment_7377" align="alignright" width="213" caption="The winning entry in the 19+ category, by Simon Crowhurst"][/caption]
  Download Original Image (jpeg)

Age Category 15-18

• Winner: Paroma Guha, St Albans
  
  Download Original Image (jpeg)
  
• First Runner Up:Archie Owen, Shrewsbury School
  
  Download Original Image (jpeg)
  
• Equal Second Runner Up:Gabby Taylor, Sheffield
  
  Download Original Image (jpeg)
  
• Equal Second Runners Up:Rebecca Hayling & Lauren Hogan, Birmingham
  
  Download Original Image (jpeg)
  

Age Category 11-14

• Winner:Laura Crosby, MacMillan Academy, Middlesbrough
  
  Download Original Image (jpeg)
  
• First Runners Up:Polly Stockton and Olivia Watson, Langley Park Girls School, Beckenham
  
  Download Original Image (jpeg)
  
• Second Runner Up:Afsana Begum, Hanson School, Bradford
  
  Download Original Image (jpeg)

The year 2009 sees both the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th birthday of his most famous work, On the Origin of Species. In anticipation of the celebrations, the BSHS Outreach & Education Committee is offering prizes for original designs that best illustrate the significance of either (or both) of these anniversaries.

Format of the entry: entries may submitted in one of the following electronic formats:

• A poster up to A3 in overall size
• An illustrated essay of 500 words
• A PC screensaver

Entries may be submitted as jpeg files or in other standard formats including a digital photograph or a digital scan (for any entry prepared initially on paper). The file size should be no more than 500kB to ensure that the winning entries can easily be downloaded from the BSHS OEC website.

Entry categories

There are three age categories for entrants, a prize of £100 being awarded in each category:

• 11-14
• 15-18
• 19+

For categories i) and ii) the age of the entrant must be confirmed by a responsible adult (parent, guardian, teacher) and the entrants' age should fall within the relevant category by the competition deadline of May 6^th 2008.

Submission:

The entry should be emailed by the May 6^th 2008 as a file attachment to outreachcompetition2008@bshs.org.uk. In the body of the email you should include the name, address, and other relevant contact details for all the entrant(s) who have contributed to the submission.

The winning entries will be announced at the BSHS/CSHPS/HSS conference at Keble College, Oxford, 5^th July 2008.

Enquiries about this competition should be directed to outreach@bshs.org.uk

Download competition announcement poster (designed by Melanie Keene from an original image by John van Wyhe)

The 2007 BSHS Outreach and Education Committee Image Prize competition was won by Joe Cain of University College London, for his image Connecting Threads.

• Download 'Connecting Threads' (jpeg, 1.3MB)

This picture is freely available for download and use in teaching and outreach work; if you use it, please ensure you supply an appropriate credit to Joe.

Commentary

The Whitchurch Silk Mill, on the River Test in Hampshire, was built in 1800. These bobbins hold silk thread woven at the mill.

I love this photograph's colour. And I adore its versatility. I use it as one of my recurrent images of my survey course. From it, I can launch into topics far and wide. There are direct connections to industrialisation and the British shift to manufacture. Stretch a bit, and this photo connects to ideas of export economies and globalisation, competition between biological and chemical dye industries, shipping and telecommunications, the role of scientists and engineers in studies of efficiency, and shifting patterns of work. Because it's a photograph of silk threads, this image also lets me talk about agriculture as an industry -- one firmly intertwined with science. Then, I can pivot to global transport of biological commodities and specimens -- connecting to Alfred Crosby's 'Columbian Exchange' and its implications. Efforts to produce silk at home gets me to Joseph Banks and Kew Gardens, then a pivot again, this time to tea and tobacco. Then it's clear sailing through the rest of the course. I'm off and running into 'economic natural history'.

It's important to me that students learn to think analytically about the most commonplace items in their lives. They ought to notice their beans come from Zambia, their lamb from New Zealand and Wales, and their chocolate... where does chocolate come from? More importantly, why is it so hard to figure that out?

A few colourful silk threads give me an ideal device for continuity along so many disconnected lines. From so simple a beginning.

About the winner

Joe Cain is Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Biology at University College London. Trained in the US in both zoology and the history and philosophy of science, Joe has been at UCL since 1996. He has longstanding interests in the history of evolutionary studies, the history of natural history, and science in London. Out of the latter, Joe developed a series of walking tours in London focusing on history of science themes. His favourite is a walk thorough Crystal Palace Park in Sydenham, still home to the famous 'prehistoric monsters'. His teaching and academic research interests can be seen on his website.

Joe's interest in photography is quite new, only a few years old. It arose from his desire to bring new locations and objects into the classroom. "I like the way photography forces me to stop and look -- look closely -- at things I normal simply breeze past," Joe explains. "I think photography sharpens my ability to study things -- just as a painter might study a bowl of fruit or a sculptor might study a model." Probably because Joe's red/green colourblind, much of his photography is black-and-white.

The runner-up for the 2007 BSHS Outreach and Education Committee Image Prize was Helen-Frances Pilkington of the University of Cambridge, for her image Everyday Items, or Newton's Experimental Instruments.

This picture is freely available for download and use in teaching and outreach work; if you use it, please ensure you supply an appropriate credit to Helen.

• Download Everyday Items... (jpeg, 1MB)

Commentary

The main point of this image is to question what is scientific about a scientific instrument. The label of 'scientific' is frequently taken unquestionably and that assumption is what this image challenges. Is this an image of simply an apple and a glass of water, or of a universal body and a prism? The placing of the question mark is intended to highlight this discussion, draw the eye and literally question our assumptions.

The choice of Newton as an icon was deliberate. Most people have heard of Newton and will therefore respond to the caption. Apart from the laws of motion, the apple myth is one of the most enduring associations that people have with Newton. By linking the apple myth with the laws of motion, Newton's achievement of creating a mathematical model of nature can then be explored. The concept of a heroic experimenter, as implied by the myth, can also be looked at -- is it an accurate picture of Newton or of any scientist?

The other part to this image is that scientific instruments are, to some extent, scientific because they have been defined to be so. What is the difference between a beaker found in a chemical laboratory today and a Pyrex jug used in the kitchen? In Newton's time, prisms were regarded by some as distorting tricks from the fair, so how could they be used for knowledge-producing enterprises? This debate is what the glass of water is intended to symbolise. Is being a scientific instrument all about perspective and definition or is there something more? Newton himself redefined prisms to be legitimate knowledge-producing instruments and argued that therefore experiments using them were valid. Can the same be said about scientific instruments today? Are they taken for granted as reliable knowledge-producing objects, or do the ideas and debates behind their existence ever come to the surface?

The final point that this image raises is that instruments encase previous experiments. Once an experiment has been accepted as true, the results can be used to create an instrument. Examples of this include the telescope (lenses and prisms) and the computer (silicon chips, various sensors). This links nicely back into the debate above concerning definitions of scientific instruments.

This image is aimed at an audience of sixth-form and above due to some of the complicated ideas involved. However, I think that able GCSE students will also find much to interest them.

Sources of inspiration:

D Gooding, T Pinch and S Schaffer (eds), The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the natural sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1993.

Cover image for The Triple Helix Volume 3 Number 2 (2007) Cambridge Edition.

The Alpha Course logo.

About the runner-up

Helen-Frances Pilkington is currently an undergraduate student at New Hall, Cambridge. She has had a varied career at Cambridge having studied Computer Science, then Geology before finally settling down into History and Philosophy of Science. Helen-Frances also found time to captain the Ladies' Real Tennis team to their first Varsity Match victory at Lords MCC, making a speech in the Long Room, and developing an expensive preference for vintage champagne. This summer she will be taking up an internship with the National Maritime Museum/Royal Observatory, Greenwich, looking at the growth of the Royal Observatory's Library in the nineteenth-century.

In 2006, the Outreach and Education Committee's web essay competition that challenged contributors to produce a 500-word piece, aimed at a general audience, in answer to the question: Why should anyone need to know about the history of science? Below, Michal Meyer's winning answer to the question.

Why should anyone need to know about the history of science?

[caption id="attachment_7371" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Winner Michal Meyer (left) receives the prize from BSHS Website Editor James Sumner"][/caption]The world we take for granted is built on science. Both the material products of civilization -- electricity, atom bombs, cars, computers, the decoded human genome -- and the way we think about the world and ourselves lie on foundations laid by science. We are homo scientificus, the makers and the made of this world of science.

It wasn't always so. How did we get this way? And who and what made us this way? Just as that illustration in biology textbooks showing our hairy hunched-over ancestors gradually straightening, striding out and suffering hair loss gives us a sense of our biological origins, history of science gives us the origins of our ideas and understandings of the natural world. And it does more: it tells us how these ideas changed the way we view the world and allowed us to change the world and ourselves.

Our ever-changing understanding of nature has always interacted with and affected the nature of our society. A machine philosophy helped generate the industrial revolution; the middle class that rose on the back of that revolution created our modern consumer society. The needs of an empire to communicate with itself advanced our understanding of electricity and its manipulation, and built the world-wide web of telegraph cables that knitted the British Empire together in the nineteenth century. Our understanding of the physical microworld combined with the urgencies of war created the atomic bomb of the twentieth century, which in turn led to the new politics of the Cold War.

But as science remade the world around it, it also remade us. The very idea of progress is tightly entwined with the origins of modern science in the seventeenth century. When we talk of controlling the environment -- when we build huge dams or create an agricultural revolution to feed the planet's growing population -- we draw on ideas developed during that time, for better and for worse. In the nineteenth century, with Darwin's theory of evolution, science reshaped the very concept of what it means to be human. That shaping continues to this day.

Today, we often think of science as the final arbiter of what is true and what is false, and as the epitome of reason. The history of science puts science back in the messy contingent world of human beings and their desires and limitations. Choices made and decisions taken in the past make up our present. Understanding the how and why of our scientific world, and the effort -- both scientific and non-scientific -- it took to fashion that world, offers the best hope of understanding the issues facing us. Issues from global warming to space exploration; from the very nature of progress to what it means to be human.

Just like science itself, the history of science is knowledge for knowledge's sake and a tool for prying open the world. In a very real sense, the history of science tells us of the world we created and the idea-creating creatures who inhabit it.

Michal Meyer

About the 2006 Essay Competition

The Outreach and Education Committee's web essay competition, announced in May 2006, challenged contributors to produce a 500-word piece, aimed at a general audience, in answer to the question: Why should anyone need to know about the history of science?

The competition generated interest in the UK and across the world, drawing more entries than the Society's other essay competitions, from a far wider constituency. Watching the email announcements get posted from list to list and carried across the world was exciting.

We received 54 applications for entry numbers and 32 entries were submitted by the closing date of 31st August. 17 came from within the UK, seven from other European countries (including Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Ukraine), 11 came from the USA, two from Canada, two from Australia and three from India. We also had entries from Brazil, the Philippines, and Singapore, with eight entrants declining to supply a postal address.

Every essay was read by two members of the Outreach and Education Committee, and the best eight went through to a second round to be read by all six judges. We were unanimous in our decisions about which three made the final round. The winning essay was submitted by Michal Meyer from Gainsville, Florida. The runner up was Daniel Mitchell from Oxford. The judges wish also to give special commendation to Mark Hurn from Cambridge, for a very amusing entry.

Although we encouraged people to include images with their submissions, few did so: next year, we will be running a similar competition for sets of images. Details will be announced in May 2007.