The King George III Collection of Scientific Instruments in the Science Museum, London: A historical and philosophical perspective

This article offers a historical and philosophical analysis of the formation of the famous
King George III Collection of Scientific Instruments. It highlights the Cartesian roots of the
European fascination with experimental natural philosophy that underpinned the creation
of this collection and shows how George Adams Sr. (1709–1772), the maker of most of
the instruments in the King George III collection, borrowed their designs from the works of
well-known scientists. It is demonstrated that Adams’s professional interests and thinking
concentrated and locked on the designs of the instruments he made, and that this focus
on a technical object was the first manifestation of a new form of thinking, i.e. technical
thinking that later became widespread in the industrial society and transformed the very
structure of thought