• Not necessarily religion but possibly a collective consciousness – Borg-like
• The sense of the hugeness of space and / or time and the recognition that all their world cannot just have appear by accident – therefore the only other way is positive creation instigated by another type of being
• The vision of religion is that it is human’s attempt to answer the question Why? Not what or how, which is where science does its thing. Human’s why is human. Other species may have an entirely other notion of why? Human’s Why is based on our collected experience & thinking about why there is an ‘is’ anyway. We find experientially that we have the ability to sense the beyond our individual & our group selves. It’s our sense of the spiritual, in my words, our human ability to sense the beyond. I am a Quaker, and my xprce & eden leads me to a loving God who creates & loves his creation. I know others deny they have such a spiritual sense at all & others still have a much better developed one than I do. I expect a version of my religious understanding could exist on other worlds too – a loving God, who loves their creation, & gives it free will to explore the creation & so maybe, come to know this creator (Timothy Phillips)
• The Emperor is the Godhead, the Creator’s avatar on this plane. All hail the Emperor! His is the power and the wisdom, to lead us against the heretics and outsiders. His blessing encompasses our souls and his vision guards our borders. All hail the Emperor! May our bodies be proof against the depradations of the unbelievers, and our hearts be proof against their blandishments. Praise the Inquisition, who root out the faithless, those who have fallen from the way. All hail the Emperor! We give thanks to the Righteous Brigade, and pledge ourselves to the Holy Crusade. One world, one system, one universe united under the Emperor. Praise his name!

F21 Lecture Theatre: Richmond Building

Free, but you need to book.

Are you interested in exploring your family history? Join us to find out the meanings of medical terms used in death certificates in the past. Explore some of the causes of mortality in the Bradford area such as diseases associated with the wool industry and ask about any medical terms that you may have come across when doing family research.

Looking at the London 'bill of mortality' for December, 1795

Venue: The New Beehive 

Take a light-headed stagger through the scientific history of drink in the company of James Sumner, University of Manchester historian and part-time time-traveller. This talk (with occasional shouting) meets Isaac Newton, Humphry Davy and others as they ponder the great questions: Is wine alcoholic? Should beer contain rotting fish? And what spoils drink – microbes, or thunder?

Dr James Sumner with wine box Time Machine

There were two evening discourses: Professor Francis Gotch on ‘Animal Electricity’ on Friday 7 September and Professor W. Stroud on ‘Range Finders’ on Monday 10 September. Soirees were held at St. George’s Hall on Thursday 6 and Tuesday 11 September.

The meeting was attended by 622 Members, 801 Associates, 482 Ladies, and 9 Foreigners. The total received from tickets was £1072 and 10s.

A total of £945 was awarded in grants, the largest being £145 to Sir John Evans for Exploration in Crete.

There were two evening lectures: from Prof. W. C. Williamson on ‘Coal and Coal Plants’ (Friday 19 September), and Prof. Clerk Maxwell on ‘Molecules’ (Monday 22 September). Two Soirees took place: at St. George’s Hall on Thursday 18 and the Mechanics’ Institute on Tuesday 23.

An annual Lecture to the Operative Classes had been introduced in 1867, and the lecturer for 1873 was C.W. Siemens on ‘Fuel’, delivered Saturday 20 September.

There were 5 types of ticket for entry to sessions: Member, Associate, Lady (started in 1843), Reporter, and Special. The Bradford meeting was attended by 575 Members, 796 Associates, 601 Ladies, and 11 Foreigners. The total received from tickets was £2102.

A total of £1545 was awarded in grants, ranging from £150 to Sir Charles Lyell for ‘Kent’s Cavern Exploration’, to £25 to Lord Houghton for ‘Economic Effects of Trades Unions’, and £10 to Dr Gladstone for ‘Chemical Constitution and Optical Properties of Essential Oils’.

The Times reported Dr. Gladstone’s welcome to the President:

He remarked that Professor Williamson had gained great eminence as a chymist, and that he took a prominent place among our philosophers. But, besides that, it seemed particularly appropriate that Professor Williamson should be elected President in Bradford, because this town and the surrounding towns of Halifax and other places in the neighbourhood depended so much upon the chymical arts. He could not imagine that there was any man more fitted to inspire an interest in chymistry in this neighbourhood than Professor Williamson, and it was also well known that he paid a good deal of attention to the mechanical arts.

The Times also printed Williamson’s Presidential Address (Wednesday 17 September), noting that he gave first ‘a most interesting and perspicuous account of the present state of Chymical Science in the terms of the Atomic Theory’, second ‘a plan for the re-organization of all our Schools, Colleges and Universities, in order to the prosecution of chymical and other scientific studies and inquiries’. The journalist then had his own bit of fun with the latest chemical theory:

The third “atom”, which gives a sort of “molecular” consistency to an otherwise disjointed composition, is an eloquent eulogy of Physical Science, especially Chymistry, for the right moral feelings and habits it naturally and directly engenders. It teaches, and, indeed, compels, inquiry, lore of truth, patience, submission to results, modesty, surrender of prejudice, the careful discrimination between what merely seems and what really is, close attention, memory, clear appreciation of terms, industry, self-denial, concentration of faculties, and directness of aim. We will confess that some of the President’s expressions left the momentary misgiving that he thought Physical Science all-sufficient, not only for educational purposes, but for all the objects of human existence; but if he has seen visions in the night he has corrected them in the morning, and we perceive that, if challenged, he might fall back on saving clauses.

Free, but you need to book.

A talk by Dr Charlotte Nicklas (Brighton) repeated at 11.30am, 1pm and 3.30pm

Promenade dresses, 1860s. Image courtesy of Southend Museums

Ever wondered how clothes got their colour? Come along and uncover the interconnected histories of science and fashion as we relate how the Victorians dyed their dresses and made their pants purple.

You will also be able to visit the Colour Museum when attending this event.

Dr Charlotte Nicklas

Silk ribbons, mid-19th century - from the University of Brighton Dress and Textiles Teaching Collection

See the visions of religion contributed by our audience members at this event.

Panelist Steven French interviewed by BBC Arabic (dubbed!).

John Stanley Bell Lecture Theatre (JSB): Richmond Building

Free, but you need to book.

Should science fiction be kept secular? Can science fiction stories help us to understand tensions between science and religion? Join us for a panel discussion with a science fiction author, a philosopher of science, fanfiction author and medieval historian. We invite you to contribute questions, comments, and your own ideas about religion in the future – or in a galaxy far, far away.

The Holy Machine by Chris Beckett, published by Corvus

Confirmed panellists:

Steven French - Philosopher of Science at Leeds

How Science Fiction Needs to Take Religion Seriously (If Its Going to Support a Healthy Secular Humanist Lifestyle!) There is a long-held distinction that attributes religious themes to fantasy and leaves the secular to science fiction. This underpins claims that the role of science fiction is to present and support the ‘scientific understanding’ of the world and that by doing so, it will squeeze out religion. However, both the distinction and such claims are simplistic, as so often are the presentations of both science and religion within the literature. Science fiction is capable of giving us a compelling vision of a secular humanist future but only if it takes both science and religion seriously.

Chris Beckett - author of The Holy Machine and winner of the Edge Hill Short Fiction Award (2009)

Religion tries to answer questions about our relationship with the world, and this relationship is also SF’s special area.  In all forms of fiction, imaginary characters are invented as a means of exploring relationships between human beings, but in science fiction the world itself is invented, and is really an additional character to which the other characters relate. The protagonist of The Holy Machine crosses the border into s society dominated by fundamentalist religion from a society which insists on an equally fundamentalist kind of atheism.  My forthcoming novel Dark Eden takes place on a planet where an entire human community is descended from a man and a woman stranded there generations previously, retelling the story of their origins over and over, and gradually turning it into a kind of religion as they try and make sense of their exile.

Una McCormack – author of Star Trek and Doctor Who novels

Both Star Trek and Doctor Who traditionally characterized religion as antithetical to their secular humanist agenda. Computers posing as gods, aliens masquerading as demons – the Enterprise or the Doctor would appear from the sky to expose such frauds and prove the natural basis of these apparently supernatural phenomena. But in later versions, both shows moved towards more nuanced reflections upon religious belief. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine took seriously the professed faith of numerous characters in their ‘Prophets’, while, in the hands of show-runner (and atheist) Russell T Davies, Doctor Who adopted religious imagery more freely than ever before, positioning the Doctor as Messiah in order to question our belief in scientific gurus as much as religious prophets. In accepting the possibility that there may be more in this universe than we have dreamt of, both programmes began to ask broader questions about the nature of faith and the experience of the numinous, while maintaining a confident (if critical) trust in their own secular humanism.

Shana Worthen - Historian of Medieval Technology, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

When a given religion is an intrinsic part of an author’s worldview, it often informs the way that author wrote works we might today recognize as science fiction. Both are ways of accounting for why the world works as it does. Early science fictional narratives, from Lucian of Samosata’s second-century moon journey to Mary Shelley’s early nineteenth-century Frankenstein, explore worlds informed simultaneously by the science and religion of their respective days. These works uses their authors’ contemporary understanding of the way the world works in order to experiment with vaguely plausible ways in which humans might experience what had previously been the provenance primarily of religious explanation, whether through physics, biology, or other fields of natural philosophy.

Science Fiction and Religion - the panel

E59 Lecture Theatre: Richmond Building

Free event, but you need to book

Victorian Bradford was both a vibrant industrial city and a centre of scientific creativity. This session explores Bradford’s key contributions to the diagnosis and treatment of anthrax, to innovative uses of X-rays, and to knowledge about past ice-ages.

Jamie Stark (Centre for History & Philosophy of Science,  University of Leeds and Thackray Medical Museum)

Identifying Anthrax: cutting edge medical research in Bradford, 1850-1920

Death in the woolpack, from "The Yorkshireman'. A mysterious hooded figure rises from bales of wool to strike down the innocent sorter. The spectre is flanked by his two shadowy accomplices - "poison" and "fever".

For most of us, the word “anthrax” conjures up ideas of biological warfare, terrorism, and a killer white powder which can be sent through the mail. However, anthrax is in fact one of the oldest diseases on the planet, affecting both humans and animals. During the nineteenth century wool was imported to Bradford from regions where anthrax occurred naturally, and this lethal, previously unknown, disease sprang up in the factories of West Yorkshire. It was so closely associated with Bradford that the French called it la maladie de Bradford. Physicians were puzzled as to what caused this rapidly fatal illness, but the woolworkers themselves were not: they pointed universally to something deadly lurking in the bales of wool, which emitted “a stench like the grave” when opened. This talk tells the story of anthrax in Bradford, where some of the most important research was carried out into a fearful disease.

F.W. Eurich, anthrax painting c1910 - showing the "classical" appearance of anthrax on the skin

Dr Annie Jamieson (Learner Development Unit, University of Bradford; Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds)

X-rayted: New Photographies in Victorian Bradford

Victorian Bradford was a very modern, forward-thinking city, keen to absorb the latest scientific and technological developments. As a local newspaper of the time put it: ““We are used to Bradford leading the way.” This was as true in photography as in other fields. This talk will describe developments in and around Bradford in two kinds of ‘new photography’ – cinematography and the X-rays. We will see that some of the leading technological developments in early cinematography took place in the city, including the invention of the first combined camera, printer and projector – Richard Appleton’s cieroscope. We will also look at public demonstrations of the mysterious new X-rays in Bradford, in 1896, and see that both individuals and commercial companies played important roles in the development of this revolutionary technology.

During her talk, Annie showed two early cinema clips, both available from the Yorkshire Film Archive. Bradford Town Hall Square, 1896 and Queen Victoria Visits Sheffield, 1897.

Jack Morrell (Visiting Lecturer, Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds (and formerly, University of Bradford, Department of History – retired)

Late Victorian Glacialists in the Bradford Area

Views of past ice ages underwent a major change in the late Victorian period. While geologists accepted that glaciers had once covered mountainous areas of Britain, few believed that ice had spread extensively to lowland areas. That radically new view was proposed by a group known as the glacialists. In the late 1890s three such glacialists from Bradford, A.Jowett H.B Maufe, and J.E. Wilson realised the significance of the unusual high-level valleys in the Bradford area. They interpreted these valleys as relics of  ice-age overflow channels for water escaping from lakes dammed by ice in the Aire Valley.  From the heights of those channels they inferred that the ice must have spread across that valley and into adjacent lowland areas, leaving the Bradford basin as the lowest lake. In this paper I examine the important findings that that they presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at its 1900 meeting in Bradford.

Participants at Innovative Bradford session

Insulin in an implant placed under skin, released according to reading from continuous blood glucose monitor also implanted under skin. If output info needed, sent automatically to pda / phone

• Stem cell technology developed to allow ‘safe’ (no risk of rejection) islet cell transplants
• Sat-Nav – traffic control:

Gives travellers the best mode of transport + route for their journey taking into account current traffic situation and using mathematics to optimise travel for “all”; this system could also ‘drive’ traffic lights and trains + buses to allow “supply” and “demand” to be matched. Merging of travel systems – merged with lift-sharing etc

• Microchip your kids – which will be followed by clandestine invention to negate same as kids rebel Izzy Hanson
• Keeping track of everything bought leads to targetted advertising & then to “thou shalt buy” on pain of punishment; “credit limit” means you have to spend at least that much [the "black market" economy?] Izzy Hanson
• Get us to grow 3rd set of teeth around age 60 or so (crocodile genes?) Izzy Hanson
• More glitter
• Implanted mobile phone  technology – technical telepathy – internet access
• Ocular imaging
• Roll on ‘The Borg’
• Artificial flexible lens to replace crystallised lenses in older people’s eyes; main problem is integration with existing muscles for focusing copyright M. Andrews
• Integrated medical system incorporating nutrition, psychological & ‘alternative’ therapies with conventional medicine for a holistic personalised & preventive-emphasised medical service copyright M. Andrews
• Micro mineral mining equipment – for coping with diminishing natural resources; perhaps fully automated copyright M. Andrews
• Space-hoover for catching or slowing down orbiting space dust copyright M. Andrews
• Bluetooth concealed packet switching on all bluetooth devices for an alternative low-speed “postal” network with no mobile masts copyright M. Andrews
• Watch with medical monitoring + advice on required food intake, etc on a continuous basis copyright M. Andrews
• Much better operating systems on your British personal optical computer copyright M. Andrews
• The relegation of technology to a more concealed / subordinate role & resurgence of more back-to-nature living copyright M. Andrews
• AI: D. R. Brown

They have made a silicon neurone that is operationally indistinguishable from a human neurone, except it works 200 times faster. At some point in the next few decades a computer that is as intelligent as a human will be built.

If I spoke to another person for 15-20 seconds & they took an hour to reply I doubt that I would regard such a person as intelligent at any level. If a computer as intelligent as me, but thinks 200 times faster than me spoke to me for 15-20 seconds I would take about an hour to reply – would it regard me as intelligent? It is more likely that it would end up outthinking me & therefore controlling me.

Conclusion: soon sentient computers will be in charge.

• Energy: D. R. Brown

Interstellar travel requires the ability to control 100Tw. Sizewell B produces 3500Mw thermal 1380 Mw electric. If this increases by about 5% p.a. we reach 100Tw in about 200 years. Therefore any extra-terrestrial visitors will be intelligent computers, with no interest in communicating with such low life as us.