The Measure of Reality
Quantification in Western Europe, 1250–1600
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:13th Dec '97
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£85.00(9780521554275)
This 1997 book discusses the shift to quantitative perception which made modern science, technology, business practice and bureaucracy possible.
This 1997 book discusses the shift from qualitative to quantitative perception which occurred in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance and which was to lead to western domination of science and technology.Western Europeans were among the first, if not the first, to invent mechanical clocks, geometrically precise maps, double-entry bookkeeping, precise algebraic and musical notations, and perspective painting. By the sixteenth century more people were thinking quantitatively in western Europe than in any other part of the world. The Measure of Reality, first published in 1997, discusses the epochal shift from qualitative to quantitative perception in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. This shift made modern science, technology, business practice and bureaucracy possible.
'In this thoroughly fascinating monograph, Alfred W. Crosby asks a fundamental question: How and why did it come to pass that Europeans, seemingly backward bumpkins in medieval times, became so successful as imperialists?' John Allen Paulos, LA Times
'The Measure of Reality has all the intellectual scope, vivid detail, imaginative interpretation and delicious wit that I expected from Crosby's earlier books. Here Crosby argues that Western Europeans were better imperialists than any humans before them in part because, from the thirteenth century onward, they thought about reality in quantitative terms and did so more consistently than other peoples. There is an important lesson here for today.' Joel E. Cohen, Rockerfeller University
'Crosby shows us how Europeans prepared for their world encompassing expansion after 1500 by learning how to measure, calculate and control the world around them by breaking reality into equal, arbitrary units. The Measure of Reality is a brilliant, provocative essay, as original and persuasive as his earlier Ecological Imperialism. A really significant little essay, full of new information and delightfully written as well.' William H. McNeill
'Western Europe did remake itself during that thousand years in a way that no other culture in the world did - or even attempted to do. And that is the transformation addressed in a very accessible and readable way by Crosby's stimulating, wide-ranging study of the intellectual development of the medieval West.' Richard Holt, The New York Times Book Review
ISBN: 9780521639903
Dimensions: 226mm x 152mm x 17mm
Weight: 380g
262 pages