In the book Thrifty Science: Making the Most of Materials in the History of Experiment, Simon Werrett worked to show how scientists in the seventeenth end eighteenth centuries made use of places and items not currently considered scientific to conduct their experiments. To do this, Werrett presented how scientists would make use of everyday objects and places to conduct their experiments with the items they had. Early modern scientists also worked to repair and reuse the more specialized equipment and with other scientists to share their materials. This was done because an environment existed that supported the use and reuse of everyday materials to work as the base of knowledge production. This is then used to further research on the history of household science as well as the history of recycling and its relation to scientific history.
Werrett is currently a Professor of the History of Science at University College London who primarily works on the interaction between the arts and the sciences from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. Werrett achieved his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and previously worked for the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Werrett has previously worked on historical works focused on the oeconomic nature of science and its thrifty nature. Because of his current research focus on the interactions within science, he is well suited to a work on how science interacted with the economic perspectives at this time.
This book strived to show how the “oeconomy” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries created research that was far more resourceful than in their research than in later periods. To do this, Werrett used both the correspondence and works of early modern scientists to show the materials they used and their perspectives on their tools. This use of sources created the sense of how the scientists believe science should be done by presenting the tools they described and created the sense that this was a common practice by using messages between many different scientists. Using these methods, Werrett presents the histories of multiple prominent scientists and their use of common household materials equipment and its repair to conduct their science. This creates a well-defined sense of how scientists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries practiced what we might now call a thrifty science.
Chapter one shows how managing a household in the seventeenth century was inherently thrifty, as this was expected for proper household management. To do this, Werrett used the works of people like Francis Bacon and books on the oeconomy of a household to present the thrifty nature of life in this period. This focus sets up this information on the oeconomy of science during this period by presenting ideas that would now be considered thrifty as part of daily life. And by doing this, Werrett set up how repurposing household goods was a part of life during this period.
Chapters two through five describe where and how science was done in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and how this process did not include the waste of materials or space. These chapters use the works of scientists in this period to show how scientific discoveries were made using household equipment and showed how consideration was taken in scientific works so that they could be recreated using equipment that people would have. They also show how items were repurposed to continue their use with few exceptions. This section creates a sense of the thrifty practices used within the household to continue research with the equipment at hand.
Chapters six and seven present the extent to which second-hand materials were used and reused within science. In these chapters, Werrett presents both the resale of scientific equipment, the growth of auctions, and their place within early modern science. Chapter six interestingly used the trade cards of businesses to argue the resale of scientific equipment and the possible ubiquitousness of repairs to the use of scientific equipment. Where chapter seven showed the growth of auctions as a part of science and their growth in prominence, and the idea that an auction was not only used as a way to decrease the price of science. Together these chapters help support the argument of thrift inherent to the science of the time by showing that repair and second equipment were not considered inferior.
Chapter eight concludes by connecting the thrifty oeconomy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became the economy of the science of the nineteenth and future centuries. This chapter presents a different argument than the rest of the book by showing how science became specialized and moved away from its previous use of general household equipment. Although this section does not detract from the general argument of the book as it takes place outside of the period of the rest of the book, it felt as though it was unnecessary to prove the book’s central theme. This is because chapter eight presents the specialization of equipment and the decline of thrift in science, which supports the opposite of the rest of the book. For this reason, chapter 8 felt out of place with the rest of the book and its main argument.
Through this argument, Werrett worked to build on both histories of household science and the history of recycling. Because one of the book’s main arguments was that there was no concept of wasting in science during this period, Thrifty Science situates itself with the study of early modern recycling very well. It also worked to support and expand the history of household science, like Leong’s Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, by presenting how science during the early modern period worked mainly within the home and with its resources. The contents of Thrifty Science also worked to expand on the difficulties of conducting science in the colonies during this period, as seen in books like Prospero’s America. In all these areas, the book worked to expand on the historiography of the cultural aspects of early modern science.
This book’s goal was to “make the household visible in early modern science” (p. 5) it is aimed mainly toward a more scholarly audience. Although the book is written in a way that a popular audience could easily read it since it does not present any difficult concepts seen in some histories of science, it is primarily intended for the scholarly audience. This is because Werrett’s work focuses on a narrow topic and is mainly designed to engrain itself with larger arguments of the importance of recycling and the household within early modern science. But, for this reason, Thrifty Science is well suited for its intended audience.
