Newton on a Horse: A Critique of the Historiographies of ‘Technology’ and ‘Modernity’

Abstract

“In the absence of a guiding theory, problems of technology, like those of the most primitive fields of science, had to be solved empirically” ( The new Cambridge modern history, concerning 1688–1751). “The striking fact is not merely that mathematical aptitude was diffused amongst large numbers of dons, divines, physicians, antiquaries and gentry …; but that it had become with many of them a passion, a supposed key to the knowledge of man, society and the universe … in the unspecialized imagination of the seventeenth century, the key that unlocked the secrets of the universe was essentially the same as that which might unlock the vaults of social wealth” (C. Wilson on England's apprenticeship 1603–1763).