How history made science

If you're anything like us, you've been enjoying the BBC's The Story of Science series with Michael Mosley, which charts the progress of science through the centuries [see sample clip above]. You may remember from an earlier post that Pietro Corsi of Oxford University's Faculty of History was one of three leading historians of science that acted as consultants to the series. 'I think it's been a success. As a viewer I enjoyed it enormously, though as a historian I sometimes wished we'd been able to say more!' says Pietro. It's clear from the way he talks that he very much enjoyed the process of working with the TV producers and is proud of the outcome. 'The difficulty was that we had this immense domain and we had to make choices about what to cover. The outcome represents a gallant, honest effort to do that while going beyond the usual stories of scientific advances and individual geniuses: apples falling in Newton's lap and Darwin's trip to the Galapagos,' says Pietro.