Abstract

Each generation finds new significances in its own past. Historians tend to reflect in new preoccupations the interests of their own day. Hence, in an age when we are conscious of the significance of science, it is understandable that the history of science should come increasingly into prominence. Histories of science have existed since the nineteenth century—it was Comte, apparently, who coined the phrase ‘the Scientific Revolution ’—but they have been written on comparatively unsophisticated lines by scientists, turned historian in the ‘sere and yellow’. To-day the position is very different. General histories of science exist in plenty and of a quality higher than any political histories of a similar kind. Journals devoted to the history of science also find a ready audience and conferences take place at regular intervals. The volume under review is the record of a conference held at Oxford in 1961 under the general heading ‘Scientific Change’, with special reference to the intellectual, social and technical conditions for scientific discovery and technical invention.