There are many books on the history of biology, or of botany as a separate science, but it is not easy to distil from them certain relevant ideas which I believe to be important in understanding the shape of modern botanical science. Indeed, I have been forced to the conclusion that much of the written account of the history of biology is liable to be misinterpreted by many readers. Since I was myself until recently guilty of such misinterpretation, I feel that it would be useful to clarify the matter here, before we start on the particular history of the Cambridge School of Botany and the Cambridge Botanic Garden.

It is common knowledge that the science of botany developed from a study of plants as useful to cure diseases, and that the oldest surviving Botanic Gardens, at Padua and Pisa in Italy, were founded in the middle of the sixteenth century as ‘herb gardens’ whose primary purpose was to grow the medicinal plants important to the medical science of the time. The foundation of such gardens in connection with universities and centres where there were flourishing medical schools proceeded quite rapidly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the first British Botanic Garden was founded in 1621 in the University of Oxford.

It is a subject that goes by many different names, plain or fancy: Social Studies in Science; Science of Science; Science and Society; Social Responsibility in Science; Science Theory; Science Policy Studies; Science in a Social Context; Liberal Studies in Science; Social Relations of Science and Technology; History/Philosophy/Sociology of Science/ Technology/Knowledge; etc. Let us call it, cryptically, STS, short for Science, Technology, and Society.

The diversity of names is characteristic, for it is highly diversified in content and significance. Some people would limit it to philosophical exercises within the groves of academia; others would pursue it politically into the industrial market place, the courts of justice and the councils of government. For some it is an area for dispassionate analysis; for others it is a cause for concern.

STS themes permeate the political, economic and cultural issues of our times. The whole subject is now a major factor in the equations of civilized life. Considered thus broadly, it has escaped the possibility of encapsulation in a single work.

But STS education – that is, organized instruction on various aspects of this general subject – is a much more specific topic. In the last decade or so, various courses of study have been tried out, with various objectives, and varying degrees of success, on a wide variety of students in secondary schools, universities, polytechnics and other institutions of higher education. This development is, of course, itself a consequence of the general interest in STS themes in the political and cultural sphere, but manifests itself much more concretely, in the form of teaching curricula, lecture notes, textbooks and examination syllabuses.

Matching diverse needs

Conventional science teaching is built around the platonic ideal of a total curriculum. This is simply all that is known, or all that one might think worth knowing, about the subject in question – chemistry, botany, invertebrate palaentology, or whatever it is. Within this curriculum, each topic, concept or technique can supposedly be given a characteristic meter reading along the scale from elementary to advanced. When account has been taken of prerequisite knowledge of other topics (§2.1), such as the calculus that will be needed for classical mechanics, or the organic chemistry required for molecular biology, the possible courses of study leading to the research frontier practically define themselves.

As we saw in chapter 1, the system of science education is dominated by this image of its fundamental purpose. The actual contents of most science courses is largely determined by the needs of the relatively small proportion of students who are hoping to proceed to the next level up the pyramid of valid knowledge. Although this means that the precise educational needs of the majority of students are not taken directly into account, it is hard to argue radically against the principle that it is better for them to learn what can be ‘validly’ taught at this level than to set out towards much less definite goals. Educational development in the sciences and technologies has traditionally been much more concerned with pedagogic technique and styles of exposition than with the topics to be taught and the order in which they are presented.

The knowledge machine

For the politician or industrial manager, it is all too easy to think of science as a more or less self-contained machine for producing knowledge. The scientists are big wheels or small cogs, driven by competitive or bureaucratic interaction. The whole thing is rather like a gold dredge, digging away at the primary ore of natural phenomena, passing it through the grinding and separating plant, and extracting fully refined knowledge. The main question seems to be how to take control of the machine, and direct it towards the richest lodes, to get the most profitable output. This instrumental attitude (§6.2) is implicit, for example, in the title of J. D. Bernal's famous book – The Social Function of Science’. We may even discuss the social role of science, as if it were an actor in a human drama, a self-conscious being with an autonomous personality.

But the image of science as a machine or an organism is fundamentally misleading. The metaphor implies a much higher degree of structural coherence and integration than is ever to be found in reality. It encourages big, bold, silly questions like ‘How can science get us out of this mess?’ or ‘Is science a good thing?’, for which there are only vain silly answers. If STS education is to make any progress, it must probe deeper than this into the complex web of social relations in which science is entangled.

Attitudes towards science

Scientific knowledge is so immense in extent, so extraordinarily detailed and precise, so general in its applications, that nobody can pretend that it is unimportant. One feels bound to take up a definite position towards science – even if only to be ‘for’ it, or ‘against’ it, in a simple-minded way.

This polarization of attitudes – exaggerated amongst the intelligentsia as the traditional ‘Two Cultures’ of humanistic and scientific education – is altogether too simple minded. On the one hand, the products of science are so very much parts of our lives that the notion of rejecting its way of thought is merely a romantic fantasy. On the other hand, those who try to let ‘science’ rule their lives soon find that ‘cheerfulness keeps breaking in’. In practice, most people nowadays understand this pretty well when their health and comforts, or their preferences and prejudices, are at stake.

Precisely because science is so pervasive, our attitudes towards it cannot be simple and single-valued. There never could be so large and complex a human activity, so diverse in all its significations and capabilities, that had not within it a great deal of both good and evil, wisdom and folly. We can scarcely suppose that this great system of thought and action has been so perfected – or could be so perfected – that it could supersede all other sources of understanding. On the other hand, it is scarcely credible that this whole apparatus, which has transformed the world and us in it, could be a snare of fate, a cruel delusion.

The vocational imperative

Science is taught to many different people, at many different levels. The exact reasons why particular items of scientific knowledge are taught in particular ways to particular groups of students cannot always be determined, except by reference to traditional practice. For teachers and for pupils, science education serves a variety of purposes that are seldom clearly defined.

But one of the main reasons for including the natural sciences in secondary and tertiary education is that they are a necessary preparation for certain aspects of modern life. Many people need to know certain elements of science to practise their professions; many jobs cannot be satisfactorily performed without some degree of scientific knowledge. Not all science education is strictly vocational. Many school pupils and university students take courses in scientific subjects because they happen to be interested in them, or very good at them – that is for the same reason as they take ‘useless’ subjects such as history or classics. But the provision of the means for acquiring and transmitting scientific knowledge – schools, technical colleges, universities, teachers, lecturers, laboratories, research institutes and so on – would not be supported to the tune of so many thousands of millions of pounds if this were not an essential feature of contemporary civilization. The science that is needed by an advanced industrial society cannot be learnt by watching mother, sitting next to Nelly, watching ‘Tomorrow's World’ or ‘Horizon’ on the TV, reading the newspapers, poring over ‘teach yourself’ books in the evenings, or even by apprenticeship to a practical craft.