A fascinating approach to the history of science which also involves the history of philosophy, political thought, religion and the political developments of the time.
So often history of science can become a triumphalist account of how right conquered. The authors here - step by step - tease out all the contemporary elements of a particular moment in the history of science, mostly concentrating on the dispute between Boyle and Hobbes over the value of Boyle's air pump and the justification of assumptions based on it. It is a dense text (every element is referenced and analysed) and clearly shows how contemporary Boyle's (and the Royal Society) ideas were. He was not a modern 'scientist' with modern assumptions. How the experimental approach related to Aristotelianism and Platonism; how it could be (and was) seen to relate to current religious and political issues; how it could be seen as subverting the social order or reinforcing it.
In the end you are drenched in the ideas, presumptions and prejudices of the time while still being able to overview it all. Brilliant.

Interesting but a bit over-written and repetitive, so quite a laborious read.

"Our present-day problems of defining our knowledge, our society, and the relationships between them centre on the same dichotomies between the public and the private, between authority and expertise, that structured the disputes we have examined in this book. We regard our scientific knowledge as open and accessible in principle, but the public does not understand it. Scientific journals are in our public libraries, but they are written in a language alien to the citizenry. We say that our laboratories constitute some of our most open professional spaces, yet the public does not enter them. Our society is said to be democratic, but the public cannot call to account what they cannot comprehend. A form of knowledge that is the most open in principle has become the most closed in practice. To entertain these doubts about our science is to question the constitution of our society. It is no wonder that scientific knowledge is so difficult to hold up to scrutiny."

This was a fantastic, insightful read that combines elements of moral philosophy, science, epistemology, ontology, empiricism, social order, assent. Absolutely loved this. The last few pages draw home the takeaway nicely - that the debates between Hobbes and Boyle reflect social and scientific issues -- issues relating knowledge, philosophy, religion, experiment, and governance -- that remain pressing today. The attention to historical detail combined with the attention to intellectual insight was particularly admirable.

Today Boyle is considered the forefather of the experimental method, and Hobbes a titan of political philosophy. This is an artifact of history, as the two were contemporaries and competitors in that strange space called 'Natural Philosophy.' One of the most important books in the history of science and in STS, Leviathan and the Air-Pump looks at the early days of the Royal Society as a constitutional moment. In the controversy over the air experiments, the integrity of the machine, the nature of the substances contained within, and the practices of witnessing used to attest to its results, Shapin and Schaffer find the start of both science and liberalism.

This is an immense and deeply researched work of scholarship, that vividly imagines the politics and practices of the time; a very difference world where technological dissension could imply the chaos of civil war, and the idea of perfect philosophical system was still attainable. My only quibbles are that this book is denser than the subject warrants, and despite protestations to the contrary, has just the small whiff of whiggishness, as the authors are descendants of Boyle's cultural tradition rather than Hobbes, and Boyle is described as 'speaking for nature' whereas Hobbes is merely 'social'.