His suggestion is that after the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, Europe changed: the resultant separation of civic and religious realms resulted in a zeitgeist where fruitful compartmentalisation such as that that kept Newton in Cambridge was possible. Strevens’s brilliant, bracing story of science’s happy abasement before the iron rule, you’ll notice, flouts that rule... Matt Hancock, in 2020’s get-out clause for bad politicians, claims the government has followed the science over Covid-19. He should read Strevens to find out what that entails. Science is not only stranger than the government believes, it is stranger than the government dares imagine.
