Science as Child’s Play in Seventeenth-Century England

In recent decades, scholars have uncovered the vital contributions made by non-elite figures, including women, artisans, and indigenous peoples, to the development of early modern natural philosophy. This Palgrave Pivot argues that children, too, quite literally played a decisive role in seventeenth-century experimental science in England, both as rhetorical exemplars, and as active contributors in the generation of natural knowledge. Exploring a widespread but critically-neglected connection be