This book challenges the dominant interpretation of the early Royal Society, which holds that its early Fellows did not seriously attempt to implement Bacon's program for the methodological reform of the sciences. Rejecting the view that scientific method serves more as window dressing than a program that can help direct research practice, Lynch shows that Bacon's program shaped the Society's earliest work in important, if often contradictory, ways. Rejecting rational reconstruction of method, he shows instead how Bacon's program was enacted in practice as Royal Society Fellows wedded Bacon's program to their own interests and problem areas. The Royal Society developed Bacon's programs in different directions, building upon a richer understanding of Bacon's methodological program than the undirected empiricism often associated with his name.

Lynch shows that Bacon's call for a focus on "things themselves" built upon three distinct images of objects of knowledge in opposition to recent, influential accounts focusing exclusively on the collective witnessing of matters of fact. Identifying a threefold metaphorical ontology of objects of knowledge and corresponding objectivities at the core of Bacon's method, Lynch reveals a picture of the Royal Society more sophisticated and unified, at the same time showing how development of their interpretations of Bacon's legacy ultimately pulled in different directions. Specular objects of knowledge privileged passive observation and justified an empiricist objectivity. Pulling in a different direction, manipulated objects of art or manual objects emphasized an engaged, constructivist objectivity, where knowing is doing. Finally, a vision of underlying forms as generative objects of knowledge, combinable like letters of the alphabet to produce phenomena at will, defined a theoretical concept of objectivity. These components of Bacon's method inform in different ways the early publications of the Royal Society by John Evelyn, Robert Hooke, John Wilkins, Thomas Sprat, and John Graunt, which are examined in detail to demonstrate the collective negotiation of an ambitious inductive program employing hypotheses, active powers, and the disciplined use of analogy. Examining the Royal Society's activity in areas ranging from horticulture, experimentation, language reform, cultural criticism, and political arithmetic, Lynch synthesizes philosophical and sociological approaches to science in developing a new understanding of the Royal Society and its legacy for science, culture, and politics.