"The had promulgated an essentially private, elitist, specialist form of knowledge. Its ' was Latin, and its common currency mathematics. Its audience was a small (if international) circle of s and savants. Romantic science, on the other hand, had a new commitment to explain, to educate, to communicate to a general public. This became the first great age of the public scientific lecture, the laboratory demonstration and the introductory textbook, often written by women. It was the age when science began to be taught to children, and the ‘experimental method' became the basis of a new, secular , in which the infinite (whether divine or not) were increasingly valued for their own sake."