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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS Does the history of science have a future?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1999

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YG
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Abstract

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It has been a singular privilege to preside over the BSHS as it celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. As we share our festivities with the British Association annual meeting at Leeds, I am doubly honoured to be giving this address. A fiftieth anniversary is a sentimental occasion. It is a moment when we can express our gratitude to our many friends and forebears who by their dedication have enabled the Society to grow and flourish. That so many of those friends should be with us to share in our celebration is a source of delight to us all. To our past presidents, former editors, officers and councillors, I extend the warmest welcome. And to our visitors and guests from overseas, I should like to say how much we value your presence and contribution to this conference.

Is there not, then, an incongruous note in my title – a hint of foreboding perhaps? If tempted to speculate on its source one might have wondered whether it is in those rumours we sometimes hear that the end of science is nigh. When we can almost clone humans and almost explain the moment of creation, what is there left? Might the end of science not spell the end of its history? A moment's reflection suggests that this cannot be. After all, the question why science should have come to an end when it did would still keep historians in business. And the more intriguing question of why the end of science has been proclaimed at the end of each of the last four centuries would keep us in business even longer!

Type
Editorial
Copyright
© 1999 British Society for the History of Science

Footnotes

Editor's note. This address was delivered at the University of Leeds on 9 September 1997 as part of the 50th Anniversary Conference of the BSHS, held in conjunction with the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The proceedings of the BSHS conference will be published as a BSHS Monograph.