The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 3
In Our Time
BBC
4.6 • 9.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2010
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal Society. The 19th century blooms scientifically with numerous alternative, specialist learned societies and associations, all threatening the Royal Society's pre-eminence. Attempts to reform the membership criteria - marking scientific leadership's painful transition from patronage to expertise - are troubled, and organisations such as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (now the BSA) excite and enliven scientific discourse outside of London. Science becomes a realistic career and a path of improvement, and by the time HG Wells writes science fiction at the end of the 19th century, there are sufficient numbers of interested, informed readers to suggest that Edwardian society contained the beginnings of a scientific society.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Thanks for downloading the In Our Time Podcast. |
| 0:39.0 | For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co. UK forward slash radio for |
| 0:45.6 | I hope you enjoy the program. I'm standing in front of an elegant marble fireplace. It's been moved since but in 1799 |
| 0:56.9 | it stood in the splendid Soho home of the President of the Royal Society, the wealthy |
| 1:01.4 | explorer and naturalist Sir Joseph Banks. His Royal Society was sitting |
| 1:06.0 | reasonably pretty, functioning as an adequate club for those gentleman fellows who enjoyed |
| 1:10.5 | their science and like to hear of new and interesting discoveries from around the world. |
| 1:15.0 | But the Roy society style of science wasn't delivering the prosperity to the nation |
| 1:20.0 | that many had hoped it would. The best hope for that was coming from the new |
| 1:24.0 | industrial heartlands of the Midlands and further north. These scientific |
| 1:28.4 | Nuvorish, such as the likes of the Lunar Society, had outflanked the Royal |
| 1:32.2 | Society in the pursuit of useful knowledge. |
| 1:36.0 | Standing around this fireplace on the 7th of March 1799, a deal was made to found a practical scientific |
| 1:41.8 | institution for, quote, |
| 1:44.0 | diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the general introduction |
| 1:47.2 | of useful mechanical inventions and improvements. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in -5563 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.