Free The Reenchantment of the World by Morris Berman Page A

that one had to husband it and use it economically

if one wanted to become the "master of all things." Such an attitude

had been unknown to the Middle Ages; to them time was plentiful and

there was no need to look upon it as something precious.9
     
     
The new concern with time running out was much in evidence by the

sixteenth century. The phrase "time is money" dates from this period,

as does the invention of the pocket 'watch, in which time, like money,

could be held in the hand or pocket. The mentality that seeks to grasp

and control time was the same mentality that produced the world view

of modern science. Western industrial nations have pushed this change

in attitude to an almost absurd conclusion. Our cities are dotted with

banks that post the time in large electronic lights that flash minute by

minute and sometimes second by second (there is one in Piccadilly Circus

which actually tells the time in tenths of a second). From the seventeenth

century on, the clock became a metaphor for the universe itself.10
     
     
Clearly, then, one can speak of a general "congruence" between science and

capitalism in early modern Europe. The rise of linear time and mechanical

thinking, the equating of time with money and the clock with the world

order, were parts of the same transformation, and each part helped to

reinforce the others. But can we make our case more strongly? Can we

illustrate the interaction in terms of problems picked, methods used,

solutions found, in the careers of individual scientists? In what follows,

I shall attempt to demonstrate how these trends crystallized within the

mind of Galileo, a figure so central to the scientific Revolution. But

our understanding of Galileo depends in part on our awareness of yet

another aspect of the changes described above: the erosion of the barrier

between the scholar and the craftsman which occurred in the sixteenth

century. For many scientists, including Galileo, it was the availability

of a new type of intellectual input which enabled their thoughts to take

such novel directions.
     
     
Much has been made of the refusal of the College of Cardinals to look

through Galileo's telescope, to see the moons of Jupiter and the craters

on the surface of the moon. In fact, this refusal cannot be ascribed to

simple obstinacy or fear of truth. In the context of the time, the use of

a device crafted by artisans to solve a scientific (let alone theological)

controversy was considered, especially in Italy, to be an incomprehensible

scrambling of categories. These two activities, the pursuit of the truth

and the manufacture of goods, were totally disparate, particularly in

terms of the social class associated with each. Bacon's argument for a

relationship between craft and cognition had as yet made little headway

even in England, a country that, compared to Italy, had undergone an

enormous acceleration in industrial production. Galileo, who studied

projectile motion in the Venice arsenal, conducted scientific studies in

what amounted to a workshop, and claimed to understand astronomy better

by means of a manufactured device, was something of an anomaly in early

seventeenth-century Italy. Where did such a person come from?
     
     
     
     
It was not until the late fifteenth century that the strong intellectual

bias against craft activity, with its lower-class associations, began

to break down. The crisis in the feudal economic system was accompanied

by a historically unprecedented increase in the social mobility of the

artisan class (including sailors and engineers).11 At the same time,

scholarly attacks on Aristotle (and they were not typical) drew ammunition

from the history of technological progress, and in doing so lavished

praise on the now exalted artisan, "who sought truth in nature not in

books."12 The result -- and the trickle which began ca. 1530 became a

torrent by 1600 -- was a host of technical works published by artisans

(very