Turning the Wheel of History

Michael Hunter, Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth-century Britain . Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1995. Pp. xii+345, £55.00. ISBN 0-85115-594-5 Michael Hunter assembles in his new volume 15 chapters, under four heads, from articles and book reviews published over the period 1971-1992. Hitherto unpublished material appears in an introduction and two of the chapters. The introduction explains the provenance of the chapters and their historical significance in relation to ‘A new theory of intellectual change’. The new theory suggests that the intellectual history of Britain during the 17th century may be better understood from the individual case studies Hunter offers, rather than broad generalizations supported by accumulated instances, as provided, for example, by Keith Thomas in his Religion and the Decline and the Decline of Magic (1971).