The Uses of Science in the Age of Newton

The Uses of Science in the Age of Newton edited by John G. Burke brings together leading historians of science to examine the contested relationship between knowledge, utility, and society in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England. Moving beyond the older assumption that science developed in isolation from political, religious, and practical concerns, the volume engages with the “new contextualist” arguments of Margaret and James Jacob and others who claim that natural philosophy...