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William E. Burns , The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective . New York : Oxford University Press , 2015. Pp. 216. ISBN 978-0-19998-933-1 . £16.99 (paperback).
Isaac Newton never left Britain. Nonetheless, his Principia (1687) was undoubtedly the product of an increasingly globalized world. William Burns's The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective opens with a map detailing the different locations on which Newton relied for his astronomical accounts. It stretches from St Kitts across the Atlantic to St Helena; through Europe to Lisbon and Danzig; and then down into Asia, ending in the Gulf of Tonkin. Newton, many scholars now accept, cannot be treated as a man bounded by the walls of Trinity College. And what goes for Newton goes for the Scientific Revolution in general. Burns looks to bring all this into the classroom, beginning by asking, 'Was the Scientific Revolution a World Revolution?' (p. 2). However, despite a promising introduction, The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective fails to deliver. There are two major flaws that run throughout.
First, there is almost no analytic framing. Burns does not tell us exactly what constitutes the 'global perspective' in the title. Instead, terms like 'global', 'globalization' and 'world' are used interchangeably with little reflection. He also fails to suggest how the 'global', whatever it might be, affects major debates in the historiography of early modern science. Instead, 'global' seems to be left as a catchall description for people and places outside Europe....