Iwan Rhys Morus - Five Way Interview

Iwan Rhys Morus is a professor of history at Aberystwyth University, specializing in the history of science. He’s written a number of books, including Frankenstein’s Children (1998), Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century (2004), When Physics Became King (2005), Shocking Bodies (2011), Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future (2019), and most recently How The Victorians Took Us To The Moon (2022). He studied Natural Science at Emmanuel College, Cambridge before moving on to do a PhD there in the history and philosophy of science. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Learned Society of Wales.

• Why science and technology?

As a historian of science, I spend a lot of time trying to understand the relationship between science, technology, and culture, particularly for the nineteenth century. It’s important, I think, because our contemporary world is entirely dependent on scientific and technological systems that are often invisible to most people. We just don’t think about what makes our smartphones work, or even how the water comes out of our taps. I’m interested in getting at how this came about – how it really came about rather than repeating fairy tales about the inevitability of scientific progress. This matters, I think, because understanding the origins of techno-scientific expertise is essential if we’re to properly defend it in a world in which it’s increasingly under threat.

• Why this book?

I’ve become increasingly interested recently in the history of the future – how people in the past have imagined their future – and that’s really what this book is about: the way in which the Victorians invented the future in the way that we think about it now. The book looks at the ingredients out of which the Victorian future was made, hence the conceit that the Victorians took us to the Moon. They didn’t really, of course, but they did, in the sense that they created the mindset, which we still have, that such things are technologically feasible. As with understanding the cultural origins of modern science and technology, I think that understanding the cultural origins of that way of thinking about the future matters, particularly as we face a future of existential crises.

• You are critical in the book of the tie between Victorian technology and empire - do you think we would have our current level of science and technology if there had been no British Empire?

I think that’s an impossible question to answer. Without getting into questions of right and wrong, I do think that it’s important to acknowledge that our current scientific institutions and much of our ways of thinking about science and technology, have imperial roots. Understanding that is the first step towards taking a hard look at the way we do things now and deciding whether we might want to do things differently.

• What’s next?

Aliens. The history of aliens and extra-terrestrial life is what’s next.

• What’s exciting you at the moment?

Christmas, obviously, since I’m a sucker for Christmas! Seriously, there’s been a flurry of recent advances and breakthroughs in cancer research which I’m hopeful signal a revolution in cancer therapy.

Interview by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a digest free here