He encapsulated his analysis into a ground-breaking book, Liberation and the Aims of Science, which was published by the University of Sussex Press in 1973. He distilled many of his insights into a course entitled ‘Principles and Perspectives of Science’ for undergraduates in the science schools. He devoured vast quantities of literature in the history, philosophy, sociology and politics of science and technology. His transformation from a scholar in physics to a scholar of the social studies of science was encouraged and supported by Professor Chris Freeman and colleagues in the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU).īrian was a consummate scholar and a brilliant lecturer. He transferred from the Physics into the History and Social Studies of Science subject group (in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences). While the regime was enthusiastic about promoting science and technology, Brian was profoundly troubled by the ways in which science and technology were being deployed by powerful incumbent interest.īefore he even returned to Sussex his intellectual focus had shifted to a concern with the ways in which science and technology were being directed and deployed.
While there Brian was irredeemably shocked by the grotesque social and economic inequalities that he witnessed and by the brutal repressiveness of the Brazilian military regime. He had a great a talent for theoretical physics, but his life and intellectual agenda were transformed by a visit to physics colleagues in Brazil. Dr Brian Easlea, who died on 24 November, was first appointed to the Sussex faculty as a Lecturer in Theoretical Physics in 1963, by when he had already taught in Denmark and the USA.
0 kommentar(er)
