The history of scientific meetings
Scientific meetings are one of the primary venues for scientists to present their new work to their colleagues with the purpose of receiving feedback at an early stage of their research, and thus they are an integral part of the process of science. They serve as an informal peer review that can help researchers to develop, clarify and refine their work as they proceed to write it up and submit it for formal review and final publication. In addition, meetings allow researchers to hear about what others in their field and related disciplines are doing, talk with colleagues from different institutions around the world, and learn about new research, tools, and techniques that might be relevant to their work. Some meetings are small and narrowly focused on a specific topic or theme, others are meant to bring many thousands of scientists together annually and are very broad. Regardless of the size of the meeting, the main goal is to bring a community of scientists together and provide opportunities for them to interact.
The development of the modern scientific meeting
Groups of men (and they were, in fact, all men) interested in discussing science met as early as 1640 in London; eventually, these meetings led to the establishment of the Royal Society of London in 1660. Since then, scientific societies and meetings have grown together. Early meetings remained small and local for about 200 years, since transportation was difficult and costly, but larger meetings began to proliferate (along with scientific societies) in the mid-1800s.
As membership in these disciplinary organizations and attendance at annual meetings grew, scientists recognized another need for communication: smaller, more focused meetings that addressed a specific theme or topic.
Professional societies play a critical role in fostering scientific progress. One of the longest-lived professional societies developed during the Scientific Revolution of the mid-1600’s, when the concept of rigorous, observation – and experiment – based science began to take hold in England. The Royal Society of London originated in the ideas of Francis Bacon. Bacon was not a scientist himself, but an English statesman and philosopher who published a book in 1620 entitled Instauratio Magna («О достоинстве и приумножении наук») about the application of what we now might call the scientific research method. In it, he described the process of inductive reasoning, in which facts are collected and a theory is developed to explain those facts. This method stands in stark contrast to the Aristotelian process, known as deductive reasoning, in which reason was used instead of observation to determine explanations. Importantly, Bacon also viewed the scientific process as a community endeavor that required financial and philosophical support from institutions like governments and universities.
Bacon died in 1626, but his philosophy lived well beyond him and spread. In 1648, a group of scientists at Oxford University in England formed what they called an “experimental science club”, and began to hold regular meetings at which they would conduct experiments and discuss the results. By including the word “experimental” in their title, this group acknowledged their adherence to Bacon’s ideas about science rather than Aristotle’s. In November of 1660, the group became a more formal entity, drawing up a charter and naming themselves the Royal Society of London. The original twelve fellows of the Society included Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle, the scientist immortalized in Boyle’s Law, which relates the pressure and temperature of a given mass of gas to its volume (eventually leading to the Ideal Gas Law). The fellows paid annual dues and met weekly to conduct scientific research largely through experiments or descriptive methods. This was a radical notion at the time – though several clubs existed where men would assemble to discuss science, the discussions at these clubs were not centered on developing new knowledge by actually conducting research.
Task 3. Read the text to find out the information about a scientific conference and its participants. Translate it into English using the words in bracketsЕжегодно в мире организуются сотни разнообразных международных научных встреч (scientific meetings). Большинство из них проходит в форме конференций (conferences), симпозиумов, (symposia, ед.ч. symposium) коллоквиумов (colloquia, ед.ч. colloquium) и семинаров (seminars / workshops). Регулярно собираются сессии (sessions) и генеральные ассамблеи (general assemblies, ед.ч. assembly) научных обществ и союзов. Популярны среди ученых деловые по характеру и образовательные по своей сути школы-семинары (schools / short courses / study days / institutes / teach-ins).Подготовка научной конференции начинается, как правило, с определения ее темы (theme of the conference / conference theme). Обычно формулируется основная (central / major theme), или официальная, тема (official theme) конференции, которая может допускать широкий выбор вопросов для обсуждения (topics for discussion). Иногда задается общая тема конференции (general theme), которая разбивается на несколько подтем (subthemes).Устроителями научной конференции, обеспечивающим, в частности, ее финансовую поддержку (sponsors of the conference / conference sponsors), являются, как правило, несколько организаций (sponsoring organizations).Все вопросы подготовки и проведения конференции, а также обслуживания ее участников находятся в ведении организационного комитета (organizing committee). Для разработки научной программы конференции, приглашения и отбора ее участников формируется программный комитет (program committee). Встречаются и другие разновидности комитетов: местный организационный (local organizing / local arrangements committee), национальный организационный (national organizing committee), и т.д.Каждый из комитетов возглавляется председателем (chairman of the committee / committee chairman). Один из организаторов конференции исполняет обязанности ее руководителя в целом (general chairman). Вся документация конференции находится в ведении ее секретаря (organizing secretary / secretary of the conference / conference secretary). Ключевые позиции на конгрессе занимают президент (president of the congress / congress president) и генеральный секретарь (secretary-general).
Task 4. Answer the questions