This piece was originally a lecture for the British Society for the History of Science 50th Anniversary Conference, held in Leeds from 9 to 11 September 1997. As such it was part of a session expressly set up to give the floor to five scholars from abroad invited to look back and consider what, if anything, has been distinctive in British historiography of science, whether positively or negatively so. Apart from some slight formalization here and there, I have left the occasional character of the piece intact.
2.
The admirable phrase “recognizably modem science” occurs with some frequency in Stillman Drake's numerous writings on Galileo.
3.
BernalJ. D., Science in history (London, 1969; first publ. 1954), 47.
4.
ShapinS., The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1996), 3.
