In recent years, it has been shown that large-scale industrial development in Britain followed the emergence of a vibrant scientific culture in many parts of the country. The Industrial Revolution was a successor—at least in some places—to what is now recognized as the British Enlightenment. To say this, however, is not to specify how the two movements were connected. Some scholars have been skeptical of claims that Enlightenment science and industrial technology were significantly linked. The mathematical physics of Isaac Newton's Principia seems very distant from the knowledge required to operate a steam engine in a coal mine. In search of the connections, historians have shed traditional notions of what constituted scientific knowledge in this period and who made it. They have begun to attend to the relatively unsung writers, lecturers, and experimental demonstrators who created “Newtonianism” as a public phenomenon, and to such places as workshops, mines, ships, and local learned societies, where the scientific culture of eighteenth-century Britain was forged.

Margaret C. Jacob and Larry Stewart have been among the leaders of the effort to bring this scientific culture to light. In this book, they summarize recent research for an audience of general readers and students. Specialists will recognize most of the topics covered from the authors’ previous publications. They assign an important role to the Boyle Lectures of the 1690s and 1700s, in which leading clerics presented Newton's discoveries in the light of natural theology. Emphasis is also given to the work of the early Newtonian public lecturers, especially John Harris, Jean Desaguliers, and William Whiston, who developed an interest in such practical problems as water supply systems and finding longitude at sea. Local scientific institutions are mentioned, including the Spitalfields Mathematical Society and the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. Surprisingly little, however, is said about the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which often figures prominently in accounts of relations between science and industry in this period. The authors discuss the work of the lecturers in London and the provinces who were displaying mechanical, chemical, and electrical experiments to public audiences. There is little mention of astronomy, however, or of optics, both of which were often featured in this kind of public science.

The authors emphasize mechanics as central to Newton's scientific legacy, apparently in order to suggest a connection between his mathematical philosophy and practical technology. It is said that Newton consolidated the “mechanical philosophy” as a metaphysical system, and the link from this to practical mechanics seems axiomatic. The line of argument is undeveloped, however, and it has the drawback of conveying a partial impression both of Newton's accomplishments and of their subsequent appropriation. Most specialists would insist that Newton's interpretation of the seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy was quite idiosyncratic, reasserting as it did an ontology of forces acting at a distance that Descartes had categorically rejected. Even on the specific details of Newton's mechanical theories, the authors’ grasp seems less than completely assured. They suggest that his third law of motion applies only in ideal circumstances, and they misstate the conclusion of his pendulum experiments. In any case, there was much more to Newtonianism in eighteenth-century Britain than mechanics. Newton was repeatedly presented by writers and lecturers as having opened up a comprehensive vision of the universe by his discoveries. His natural philosophy inspired many people with the sense of a cosmos designed by God and governed by divine will. At the same time, the image of a universe that obeyed its own inherent laws opened the way to a more secular form of science. Jacob and Stewart mention theology a number of times; they might have considered more systematically the ambiguous theological resonances of Newton's philosophy, which underlay its widespread and persistent appeal.

In geographical terms, the authors’ discussion moves to and fro across the Channel, and occasionally across the Atlantic, but without consistently focusing on a country other than Britain to develop a comparison. Notwithstanding the title, there is disappointingly little on the uses of science to support British imperial expansion, a topic on which the authors are well qualified to summarize recent research. Stylistically, the book will pose a series of obstacles to its intended readers. They may well stumble over the very first page, where an allusion is made to trials occurring in Venice in the 1690s, but without explanation of who was on trial, for what offense, or with what outcome. If they reach the end, they will probably wonder why large chunks of untranslated French prose have been dumped into the footnotes of the final chapter. There is some repetition, and occasional elementary errors, like the suggestion that the Aristotelians believed in a vacuum (35), or the identification of Prince Albert as the Prince of Wales (145). The authors and readers of Practical Matter would have been well served by rigorous editing, but of course university presses no longer provide such support. The cover photograph, by contrast, is evocative and aesthetically pleasing; clearly significant resources were devoted to that.