Applied Science: Knowledge, Modernity, and Britain’s Public Realm (Science in History)

Applied Science: Knowledge, Modernity, and Britain’s Public Realm (Science in History)
by: Robert Bud (Author)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 28 Mar. 2024
Language: English
Print Length: 346 pages
ISBN-10: 1009365231
ISBN-13: 9781009365239
Book Description
For almost two centuries, the category of ‘applied science’ was widely taken to be both real and important. Then, its use faded. How could an entire category of science appear and disappear? By taking a longue durée approach to British attitudes across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Robert Bud explores the scientific and cultural trends that led to such a dramatic rise and fall. He traces the prospects and consequences that gave the term meaning, from its origins to its heyday as an elixir to cure many of the economic, cultural, and political ills of the UK, eventually overtaken by its competitor, ‘technology’. Bud examines how ‘applied science’ was shaped by educational and research institutions, sociotechnical imaginaries, and political ideologies and explores the extent to which non-scientific lay opinion, mediated by politicians and newspapers, could become a driver in the classification of science.

About the Author

Book Description Bud explores the rise and fall of ‘applied science’ as a category of thought shaped by scientists and laity alike. About the Author Robert Bud is Emeritus Keeper at London’s Science Museum. He has led science, medicine, and curatorial research at the Museum, writing and editing books across chemical, biotechnological, and scientific instrument history.