well yeah, that’s still several decades later. and the redbricks still had the advantage over oxbridge for practical/experimental science (especially chemistry) for quite a while. :p
It's several decades later than the earliest science courses in Germany. That's not at all the same thing as several decades later than the rest of the world. Those courses were nothing like science courses as you'd think of them: they were optional, more hobby than academic discipline, and largely based on demonstration and, to an extent, showmanship. It's also worth noting that a lack of formal courses doesn't mean there was no science being taught. Darwin, for example, learned a great deal of geology and botany (mostly from open lecture series) despite studying theology.
Remember that the word 'scientist' wasn't coined until 1833 and wasn't used seriously until the 1840s, and scientific careers didn't really become commonplace until the end of the century.* I don't know much about chemistry in England in the 19th century (though to my knowledge neither Davy nor Dalton, the two chemists I can think of off-hand, were associated with universities?), but the Cavendish was one of the earliest laboratories in the country and was basically unrivalled in physics until the 1920s. (Biology, obviously, didn't really emerge as a distinct discipline until the first half of the 20th century, but the Cavendish has a reasonable claim to being the birthplace of modern molecular biology, too.)
Sorry, I don't mean to lecture. :D It's just not very often this knowledge comes in useful.
*Fun fact: after the publication of the Origin, Huxley used his friendship with Darwin as a springboard from which to push science as a viable career option.
dafuq? those disciplines all have completely different methodolgies and aims. I struggle to even understand how PPE is supposed to work as a coherent course, but archaeology and psychology? :/
I think the idea is you can do a broad range of things if you like. You're only required to take courses in two or three of them, and from second year on you can specialise, that sort of thing. It's much like Natural Sciences, really; being able to take both physics and biology in first year is a bit bizarre, but I think it's better than how other unis do it.
ETA: I've just looked it up, out of curiosity. Apparently you do four courses in the first year (though for some there's more than one per discipline), then either one or two from second year onwards. In practice I think it's roughly how Scottish universities do it. (To clarify: your final degree would be a B.A. in Psychology, or whatever, not a B.A. in... Human, Political, and Social Studies, I think it's called. Much like my final degree will, specifically, be a B.A. in Zoology, not a B.A. in Natural Sciences.)
