Flamsteed's stars: new perspectives on the life and work of the first Astronomer Royal (1646–1719)

seventeenth century. Precisely because experimental natural philosophy was thought incapable of becoming "scientific", as John Locke remarked, it was more accessible to women than were some other disciplines. As a venture into relatively unexplored territory, this book is extremely useful. Although there is still much work required in order to reconfigure the field, the need to include a wider range of activities and participants is clear. The next tasks will be to compare early modem English women with their European contemporaries, and to integrate gender history, social history, and current work in the historiography of science, as is already happening for other periods.