the book is actually a revision of her nine-year-old classic text, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution. it is posing questions about the relationship between scientific and social changes that will be of interest to historians in many fields. in this book, she aimed to"to explain the historical process by which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries scientific knowledge became an integral part of the Western culture". Karen (1999) review is probably the best available review of this book so far. make sure check it out after reading the book.