"By underscoring the virtues of eclecticism and its Pietist roots, Whitmer has taken discussion of the early relationship between science and religion to a new level. . . . Via meticulous scholarship and fabulous illustrations, she explores, with nuance, how religious and intellectual energies intertwined in ways that galvanized mathematical practice. By highlighting the interplay among individual beliefs, actions, and scientific achievements, her book resuscitates the careers of such understudied figures as Francke, Wolff, and Leibniz in history of science scholarship. Readers curious about the evolution of scientific culture should cherish this book’s revelatory spotlight on an important niche in the Enlightenment."

Justin Grosslight | Arts Fuse

"Whitmer's new book offers a history of science set in the Halle Orphanage, a building that was founded in the middle of the 1690s in the Prussian city of Halle by a group of German Lutherans known as Pietists. . . . As the fascinating story unfolds, Whitmer's account meaningfully contributes to histories of observation, material culture, models and modeling, and education."

Carla Nappi | New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

"Modernism takes many forms; what many of us thought was a credit to Pietism of the Franke school turns out to be an amalgam of differentiated Enlightenment thought. I strongly recommend reading this book and rethinking the issues."

Joanna Geyer-Kordesch, University of Glasgow

"Whitmer approaches Halle's orphanage as a scientific institution, placing it at the center of the early German Enlightenment. In doing so, she tells a vital and largely neglected story that fundamentally challenges common notions about the divide between the scientific and the sacred in the early modern era. This is a fascinating book with unexpected implications for the present."

Andre Wakefield, Pitzer College

“Kelly Joan Whitmer’s concise study draws attention to one central institution of the pietist enterprise in Prussia, the Halle Orphanage…. [S]he adds another instructive example showing how deeply intertwined natural philosophy and theology (and politics) were in early modern Europe and even well into the eighteenth century….[T]he succinct and still broad coverage should make this book of interest to anyone fascinated by the intricacies of early modern European intellectual history.”
 

British Journal for the History of Science

"In this lucid and engaging book, Kelly Joan Whitmer describes the Halle Orphanage (das hallesche Waisenhaus)--an orphanage founded around 1700 by German Lutheran Pietists in the Prussian city of Halle--as a path-breaking scientific institution. . . . Coursing through The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community is a concern with the epistemic ideals and persona of a good observer. . . . One of the strengths of Whitmer's book is the contention that the orphanage was not simply 'structured by logic or reason,' or, at least, that it distinguished itself from other scientific communities by taking seriously the role of affect, desire, and emotion in the pursuit of scientific knowledge."

American Historical Review