Ordering knowledge, re-ordering empire: Science and state formation in the English Atlantic world, 1650-1688

The central argument of this dissertation is that the early modern English state and its dependent empire were significantly shaped by contemporary science. It identifies a particular mode of natural knowledge production, rooted in the centralized management of empirical information, that was commonly practiced by elite medical practitioners and other men of science in the later seventeenth century. It then examines the ways in which those practices of information management became the foundation of other projects pursued by the same personnel---projects that have not heretofore been considered by historians to have much to do with medicine, or even science generally, and which were central to the formation of the modern English state: the Royal Society's program to reform the practices of artisans, Samuel Pepys's reorganization of the Royal Navy, and the establishment of new organs of state to centrally manage colonial development and coordinate the conduct of commerce in the English Atlantic empire.