Comments on: Werrett, Thrifty Science – Review

By: Kerry Reed

Kerry Reed — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 03:03:45 +0000

Hi Bill,

Great review. I am fascinated by material culture and am glad we had a chance to read something like this during the semester. I enjoyed the book, though I thought, similar to Prieto’s work, there was a grand theory that the author was unwilling to posit. It seems to me that the end of oeconomical science happened to coincide with industrialization and early globalization, and I would have appreciated more discussion on these points, but that might be a different book. Also, I found it odd that the republic of letters did not feature more prominently. The 16th and 17th century saw a great number of theories and scientific developments, and the elite may have been considered out of touch if they did not participate in the scientific enterprise. It may be that the culture of the republic of letters facilitated the maintenance and repurposing of material by virtue of the dissemination of new ideas, methods, and experiments. When everything was under the purview of natural philosophy, it makes sense that any tool or instrument could be repurposed for this end.
Looking forward to the discussion.

By: Alexa Shipes

Alexa Shipes — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 17:01:34 +0000

I found your review interesting. I really liked the everyday life aspect of the book, but the book was slow going (as there was a lot of material to get through and I wasn’t sure what “Big Science” really had to do with “thrifty science”). The book had problems with its scope, as it went too broad in its attempts to connect early modern “thrifty science” with modern “Big Science.” It was strange that the book didn’t end in 1800 with the Industrial Revolution, as this changed the way science worked. New disciplines like virology emerged in the 19th century, as well as new ideas such as germ theory. However, there was also some continuity between the early modern world and the Victorian world. Doctors in the Victorian era, like their early modern counterparts, cleaned their instruments, but did not sterilize them; this practice resulted in many deaths from sepsis. A well-known example is President James Garfield, who was assassinated in 1881. He did not die from the bullet, but from sepsis contracted after his doctors probed the wound with unsterilized instruments.