Thrifty Science

Regular price €47.99
Regular price €49.99 Sale Sale price €47.99
18th century
A01=Simon Werrett
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Simon Werrett
automatic-update
benjamin franklin
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD
Category=NHD
Category=PDN
Category=PDX
Category=TBX
cleaning
COP=United States
cultural studies
culture
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
domestic spaces
economy
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_tech-engineering
experimental
experimentation
experiments
frugal
frugality
historical
history
home
house
households
inquiry
investigations
Isaac Newton
laboratories
Language_English
maintenance
materials
oeconomy
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
recycling
repairs
reuse
science
scientific
scientists
softlaunch
thrift

Product details

  • ISBN 9780226610252
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 11 Feb 2019
  • Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

Our Delivery Time Frames Explained
2-4 Working Days: Available in-stock

10-20 Working Days
: On Backorder

Will Deliver When Available
: On Pre-Order or Reprinting

We ship your order once all items have arrived at our warehouse and are processed. Need those 2-4 day shipping items sooner? Just place a separate order for them!

If the twentieth century saw the rise of “Big Science,” then the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were surely an age of thrift. As Simon Werrett’s new history shows, frugal early modern experimenters transformed their homes into laboratories as they recycled, repurposed, repaired, and reused their material possessions to learn about the natural world. Thrifty Science explores this distinctive culture of experiment and demonstrates how the values of the household helped to shape an array of experimental inquiries, ranging from esoteric investigations of glowworms and sour beer to famous experiments such as Benjamin Franklin’s use of a kite to show lightning was electrical and Isaac Newton’s investigations of color using prisms. Tracing the diverse ways that men and women put their material possessions into the service of experiment, Werrett offers a history of practices of recycling and repurposing that are often assumed to be more recent in origin. This thriving domestic culture of inquiry was eclipsed by new forms of experimental culture in the nineteenth century, however, culminating in the resource-hungry science of the twentieth. Could thrifty science be making a comeback today, as scientists grapple with the need to make their research more environmentally sustainable?