In her elegant history Worldly Goods Jardine showed how iternational trade and an increasing demand for consumer 'worldly goods' on the part of the wealthy triggered the European Renaissance in art and learning in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Her new book Ingenious Pursuits analyses the largly commercial motivations driving the scientific revolutions of the same period. She explores the circumstances of these intellectual and cultural shifts and their part in the foundation of modern thought.