So much has been written on Wren, and so much research dedicated to his memory, that a new and different approach must begin with a little historiography to explain how it will complement what is already known and what particular problems already exist that it might help to solve.

That it is misleading to divorce the history of ideas from the study of their social, cultural or political contexts is now commonplace. The same is true of divisions within intellectual history – between the histories of science and art, technology, philosophy or economics. Organizational divisions, necessary in their own way, are difficult to bridge, not least because it is rarely clear where we should begin to build. The distortions they create are more commonly brought to light in the kind of masterly synthesis that establishes a new approach to an area of history, than in a scholarly monograph on a restricted and clearly defined subject.

Yet, occasionally, a problem can arise, whose source in an artificial division of labour is not difficult to guess. Just such a case is Wren.

From a modern point of view, Wren divided his career between two subject areas – science and architecture. As we look at the seventeenth century, the subjects seem even more distinct than today, since the decorative element played a much greater role in architecture. The fact that Wren now falls within the histories of both science and art has created many questions surrounding the change he made in the mid-1660s.