Science has never been conducted with quite the cold objectivity of popular imagination. On the contrary, as the authors in The Politics of Western Science set out to show, science has always been carried out within a relationship which maintains a dialogue with the political issues of its particular time.

The collection provides an overview for the nonspecialist showing just how political choices have influenced scientific ideas and their uses, and the ways in which national styles of science, as well as beliefs and ideologies, have shaped the contours of science over three hundred years.