Professor Simon Werrett (UCL Professor of History and Philosophy of Science) talks about his award-winning book, THRIFTY SCIENCE.

In Britain of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the practices of reuse, re-purpose, and recycle were core to the work of what became science. More important, if you follow the trails left by these activities, you’ll find ideas that reorganise how we should think about the way science was done, where it was done, and who did the work. Professor Werrett also resurrects the old word “oeconomy,” putting it to work to help us understand why reuse was understood to be virtuous. And he explains how industrialisation in the nineteenth century substituted ideas related to consumption and specialisation.

In this interview, Professor Werrett discusses the main ideas of his book, plus how he hopes to extend h ...