The scientific revolution that wasn’t: uncovering the radical science movement
| Dates: | 11 May 2015 |
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| Times: | 13:00 - 14:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Manchester Institute of Innovation Research |
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| Venue opening hours: | 1 -2 pm (coffee from 12.30pm) |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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| Speaker: | Alice Bell |
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Most scientific revolutions are more about politics than nature, but this is the story of an especially overtly political one. It's the story of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, BSSRS, or Bizrus to their friends. Science, these revolutionaries argued, had lost its way. Science had become too focused to the whims of senior staff and their cronies, allowing its energies to be applied to war and environmental destruction. If the public didn’t like science, so the argument went, maybe they had a point. In the shadow of the still-blazing light of the atomic bomb, with increasing concern over chemical and biological weapons as well as an emerging environmental crisis, science needed to take a good, hard look at itself. Elitist and stuffy, science had let itself fester a bit. The time had come to imagine a new way of doing science. Active and reasonably well-known throughout the 1970s, they fell apart in the 1980s and are largely forgotten today. We'll examine what they stood for, why they seemed to fail, and the long-term impact the movement had, even if the extreme change they called for never happened.
Speaker
Alice Bell
Role: Writer and campaigner specialising in the politics of S&T
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
10.05
Harold Hanklins building
Oxford Road
Manchester
