ABSTRACT

I suppose the earliest lectures that could be properly be called 'demonstration lectures3 are those often illustrated by famous artists of the dissection of a body before an audience of medical students or the occasional instance of a scientist being commanded to demonstrate his latest discoveries before his Monarch. And there are in existence woodcuts purporting to show Pythagoras (figure 1.1) demonstrating some musical phenomena that I suppose come close to being in our category. In the thirteenth century Roger Bacon (1214-92) wrote

One cannot arrive at the truth except by means of experi­ mentation . .. the practice of each science is by use and not by theory or speculation.