Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725 (Paperback)

1. Collecting the future in the early modern past; Part I. Origins: 2. Knowledge in ruins; 3. A charlatan's promise; Part II. Inventing the Wish List: 4. Jakob Bornitz and the joy of things; 5. Francis Bacon's new world of sciences; 6. Things fall apart: desiderata in the Hartlib circle; 7. Rebelling against useful knowledge; Part III. Institutionalizing Desire: 8. Restoring societies: the Orphean charms of science; 9. What men want: the private and public interests of the Royal Society; 10. Enemy camps: desiderata and priority disputes; 11. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and the hubris of the wish list; 12. Georg Hieronymus Welsch's fiction of consensus; 13. Wish lists enter the Academy: a new intellectual economy; 14. No final frontiers.