Science as status: early marketing activities of Newtonian entrepreneurs and the new taste regime of polite society in eighteenth-century England

In a dramatic scientific paradigm change that followed the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica in 1687, Newtonian mathematical formalism and empirics supplanted the existing dominant Cartesian philosophical framework. Examining primary source documents, scientific instruments, and materiality of the time, the authors find that early entrepreneurial marketing activities promoted Newtonian science products and experiences as that paradigm war was taking place. Through the theoretical lens of taste regimes, this study shows how these entrepreneurs' advertisements, books, public demonstrations, and scientific instruments found social acceptance, became desirable status symbols, and contributed to the visibility, acceptance, and spread of Newtonian scientific principles. This history is used to discuss ethics of the marketing of science.