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I'd like you to come back with me for a moment

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to the 19th century,

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specifically to June 24, 1833.

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The British Association for the Advancement of Science

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is holding its third meeting at the University of Cambridge.

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It's the first night of the meeting,

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and a confrontation is about to take place

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that will change science forever.

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An elderly, white-haired man stands up.

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The members of the Association are shocked to realize

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that it's the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

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who hadn't even left his house in years until that day.

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They're even more shocked by what he says.

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"You must stop calling yourselves natural philosophers."

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Coleridge felt that true philosophers like himself

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pondered the cosmos from their armchairs.

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They were not mucking around in the fossil pits

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or conducting messy experiments with electrical piles

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like the members of the British Association.

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The crowd grew angry and began to complain loudly.

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A young Cambridge scholar named William Whewell stood up

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and quieted the audience.

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He politely agreed that an appropriate name

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for the members of the association did not exist.

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"If 'philosophers' is taken to be too wide and lofty a term,"

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he said, "then, by analogy with 'artist,'

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we may form 'scientist.'"

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This was the first time the word scientist

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was uttered in public,

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only 179 years ago.

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I first found out about this confrontation when I was in graduate school,

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and it kind of blew me away.

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I mean, how could the word scientist

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not have existed until 1833?

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What were scientists called before?

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What had changed to make a new name necessary

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precisely at that moment?

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Prior to this meeting, those who studied the natural world

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were talented amateurs.

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Think of the country clergyman or squire

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collecting his beetles or fossils,

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like Charles Darwin, for example,

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or, the hired help of a nobleman, like Joseph Priestley,

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who was the literary companion

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to the Marquis of Lansdowne

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when he discovered oxygen.

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After this, they were scientists,

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professionals with a particular scientific method,

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goals, societies and funding.

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Much of this revolution can be traced to four men

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who met at Cambridge University in 1812:

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Charles Babbage, John Herschel, Richard Jones and William Whewell.

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These were brilliant, driven men

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who accomplished amazing things.

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Charles Babbage, I think known to most TEDsters,

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invented the first mechanical calculator

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and the first prototype of a modern computer.

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John Herschel mapped the stars of the southern hemisphere,

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and, in his spare time, co-invented photography.

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I'm sure we could all be that productive

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without Facebook or Twitter to take up our time.

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Richard Jones became an important economist

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who later influenced Karl Marx.

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And Whewell not only coined the term scientist,

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as well as the words anode, cathode and ion,

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but spearheaded international big science

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with his global research on the tides.

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In the Cambridge winter of 1812 and 1813,

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the four met for what they called philosophical breakfasts.

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They talked about science

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and the need for a new scientific revolution.

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They felt science had stagnated

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since the days of the scientific revolution that had happened

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in the 17th century.

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It was time for a new revolution,

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which they pledged to bring about,

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and what's so amazing about these guys is,

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not only did they have these

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grandiose undergraduate dreams,

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but they actually carried them out,

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even beyond their wildest dreams.

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And I'm going to tell you today

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about four major changes to science these men made.

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About 200 years before,

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Francis Bacon and then, later, Isaac Newton,

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had proposed an inductive scientific method.

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Now that's a method that starts from

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observations and experiments

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and moves to generalizations about nature called natural laws,

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which are always subject to revision or rejection

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should new evidence arise.

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However, in 1809, David Ricardo muddied the waters

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by arguing that the science of economics

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should use a different, deductive method.

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The problem was that an influential group at Oxford

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began arguing that because it worked so well in economics,

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this deductive method ought to be applied

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to the natural sciences too.

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The members of the philosophical breakfast club disagreed.

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They wrote books and articles promoting inductive method

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in all the sciences

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that were widely read by natural philosophers,

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university students and members of the public.

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Reading one of Herschel's books

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was such a watershed moment for Charles Darwin

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that he would later say, "Scarcely anything in my life

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made so deep an impression on me.

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It made me wish to add my might

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to the accumulated store of natural knowledge."

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It also shaped Darwin's scientific method,

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as well as that used by his peers.

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[Science for the public good]

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Previously, it was believed that scientific knowledge

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ought to be used for the good of the king or queen,

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or for one's own personal gain.

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For example, ship captains needed to know

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information about the tides in order to safely dock at ports.

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Harbormasters would gather this knowledge

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and sell it to the ship captains.

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The philosophical breakfast club changed that,

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working together.

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Whewell's worldwide study of the tides

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resulted in public tide tables and tidal maps

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that freely provided the harbormasters' knowledge

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to all ship captains.

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Herschel helped by making tidal observations

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off the coast of South Africa,

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and, as he complained to Whewell,

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he was knocked off the docks during a violent high tide for his trouble.

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The four men really helped each other in every way.

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They also relentlessly lobbied the British government

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for the money to build Babbage's engines

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because they believed these engines

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would have a huge practical impact on society.

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In the days before pocket calculators,

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the numbers that most professionals needed --

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bankers, insurance agents, ship captains, engineers —

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were to be found in lookup books like this,

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filled with tables of figures.

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These tables were calculated

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using a fixed procedure over and over

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by part-time workers known as -- and this is amazing -- computers,

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but these calculations were really difficult.

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I mean, this nautical almanac

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published the lunar differences for every month of the year.

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Each month required 1,365 calculations,

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so these tables were filled with mistakes.

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Babbage's difference engine was the first mechanical calculator

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devised to accurately compute any of these tables.

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Two models of his engine were built in the last 20 years

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by a team from the Science Museum of London

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using his own plans.

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This is the one now at the Computer History Museum in California,

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and it calculates accurately. It actually works.

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Later, Babbage's analytical engine

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was the first mechanical computer in the modern sense.

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It had a separate memory and central processor.

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It was capable of iteration, conditional branching

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and parallel processing,

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and it was programmable using punched cards,

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an idea Babbage took from Jacquard's loom.

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Tragically, Babbage's engines never were built in his day

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because most people thought that

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non-human computers would have no usefulness

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for the public.

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[New scientific institutions]

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Founded in Bacon's time, the Royal Society of London

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was the foremost scientific society in England

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and even in the rest of the world.

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By the 19th century, it had become

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a kind of gentleman's club

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populated mainly by antiquarians, literary men and the nobility.

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The members of the philosophical breakfast club

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helped form a number of new scientific societies,

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including the British Association.

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These new societies required

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that members be active researchers publishing their results.

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They reinstated the tradition of the Q&A

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after scientific papers were read,

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which had been discontinued by the Royal Society

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as being ungentlemanly.

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And for the first time, they gave women a foot in the door of science.

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Members were encouraged to bring their wives,

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daughters and sisters to the meetings of the British Association,

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and while the women were expected to attend

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only the public lectures and the social events like this one,

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they began to infiltrate the scientific sessions as well.

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The British Association would later be the first

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of the major national science organizations in the world

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to admit women as full members.

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[External funding for science]

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Up to the 19th century,

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natural philosophers were expected to pay

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for their own equipment and supplies.

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Occasionally, there were prizes,

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such as that given to John Harrison in the 18th century,

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for solving the so-called longitude problem,

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but prizes were only given after the fact,

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when they were given at all.

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On the advice of the philosophical breakfast club,

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the British Association began to use the extra money

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generated by its meetings to give grants

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for research in astronomy, the tides, fossil fish,

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shipbuilding, and many other areas.

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These grants not only allowed

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less wealthy men to conduct research,

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but they also encouraged thinking outside the box,

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rather than just trying to solve one pre-set question.

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Eventually, the Royal Society

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and the scientific societies of other countries followed suit,

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and this has become -- fortunately it's become --

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a major part of the scientific landscape today.

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So the philosophical breakfast club

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helped invent the modern scientist.

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That's the heroic part of their story.

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There's a flip side as well.

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They did not foresee at least one consequence

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of their revolution.

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They would have been deeply dismayed

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by today's disjunction between science and the rest of culture.

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It's shocking to realize

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that only 28 percent of American adults

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have even a very basic level of science literacy,

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and this was tested by asking simple questions like,

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"Did humans and dinosaurs inhabit the Earth at the same time?"

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and "What proportion of the Earth is covered in water?"

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Once scientists became members of a professional group,

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they were slowly walled off from the rest of us.

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This is the unintended consequence of the revolution

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that started with our four friends.

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Charles Darwin said,

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"I sometimes think that general and popular treatises

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are almost as important for the progress of science

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as original work."

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In fact, "Origin of Species" was written

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for a general and popular audience,

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and was widely read when it first appeared.

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Darwin knew what we seem to have forgotten,

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that science is not only for scientists.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)