Social History of Truth
Civility and Science in Seventeenth-century England

This work employs detailed historical narrative to argue about the establishment of factual knowledge both in science and in everyday practice. Accounts of gentlemen-philosophers are used to illustrate the study's claim that trust is imperative for constituting every kind of knowledge.

Knowledge-making is always a collective enterprise: people have to know whom to trust in order to know something about the natural world.