Transcript of the Romanes Lecture given by the Prime Minister at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on 27 February 2009.
Three hundred and fifty years ago – just a few years before this theatre was built – a small gathering of scientists who had first met here in Oxford during the English Civil War, decided to establish themselves as a formal group and to meet weekly in London to conduct, observe and discuss their experiments.
For many, this meeting – which led directly to the founding of the Royal Society – is seen as the birth of modern science. It marked a fundamental change in how we thought about the natural world; no longer arguing on philosophical or theological grounds about how the world must be, but seeking – through experiment, observation, and analysis – knowledge of how it actually was, highlighting the truth that the freedom of thought vital to science and its progress was led by the development in Britain ahead of other countries – first of tolerance and then of liberty.
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