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> There is an essence of science - curiousity. > > This technical language problem, is the fundamental question simply that > many History graduates do not have all of the tools required to start a > PhD in the HoS? Is there not need for some kind of taught masters in > general science to get them up to speed on the basic ideas and > nomenclature? > -- I'm glad that Colin Axon redeemed himself by saying that perhaps historians *can*, learn about science as until that moment he seemed to be making the standard attack on historians and their scientific ineptitude. (You know, the one where you get collared by some old doc at a conference and he asks you why you're doing history of medicine since you are only a historian.) Personally I think some kind of conversion Masters, aimed at historians going into HSTM, isn't such a bad idea, but perhaps we should ask ourselves why it might be necessary. Personally I never wanted to make a choice betweem studying arts subjects and studying the sciences but the educational system in England virtually forces us to do so. I managed, quite unusually at the time, to combine arts and science 'A' levels. My English and History teachers were very encouraging, supporting my argument that a well educated person should know something about science. However, my science teachers were altogether different, informing me that I would fail chemistry if I did not also study either maths or physics and that one science 'A' level was no good to anybody as it wouldn't get me into University. The message was quite clear - science is specialist territory and unless you intend to specialise, stay clear, you just won't understand. I had to lie just to enrol on a science 'A' level; it was my first encounter with scientists and their notion that science is a distinct form of knowledge available to and understood by an elite few. I wouldn't have had a 'technical-language problem' if scientists had been more willing to teach their subject to someone they perceived as a non-scientist. So HSTM seemed an ideal topic for me, here I could make use of my training in history, and also that one (useless) science 'A' level. Here, also, I could unravel science as a process, not as a series of landmark discoveries or noteable publications, or big pronouncements made by white, middle-aged, middle-class men living in the West. I could begin to get under the skin of science (or to take the lid off the black box if you prefer an inorganic metaphor) and find out just what it was that scientists had attempted to exclude me from. I don't think any of us expected the BSHS PG conference to spark off a debate on the future of HSTM, classical and technical languages, the nature of this thing called 'science' and when the human race came into existence. I know that Aileen thinks we have moved away from her original question about what future HSTM has when so many graduates concentrate on medicine and biology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I don't think attempting to define science is going to help answer that question, particularly when so many of the answers given are present-centred and define 'science' as exclusive in one way or another. As I seem to remember saying before, *that* goes against all my historical training. Helen Blackman PS, as far as I'm concerned, curiosity is the stuff that's bad for cats. Helen Blackman CHSTM Maths Tower Manchester University Oxford Road M13 9PL Tel: 0161 275 2000 ext.5929 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%