The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600 by Alfred W. Crosby

From the Publisher

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. More people in Western Europe thought quantitatively in the sixteenth century than in any other part of the world, enabling them to become the world's leaders. With amusing detail and historical anecdote, Alfred Crosby discusses the shift from qualitative to quantitative perception that occurred during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Alfred W. Crosby is the author of five books, including the award-winning Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge, 1986)

Publishers Weekly

Having written such books as Ecological Imperialism, Crosby, a professor of American studies, history and geography at the University of Texas, Austin, wondered what it was that made Europeans such successful colonists and empire builders. In this engrossing study, he posits that it was Europeans' ability to divide the world, whether experiential or abstract, into quanta which they could then manipulate and exploit. Crosby begins by reminding readers how different the Western worldview was a millennium ago. For example, Europeans, Crosby notes, "had a system of unequal accordian-pleated hours that puffed up and deflated so as to ensure a dozen hours each for daytime and nighttime, winter and summer." This more fluid conception of reality did not change over night. Crosby first looks at the "Necessary but Insufficient Causes" like the codification of time and calendar, new strides in cartography and astronomy and the introduction of Arabic numerals, before looking at the match that set fire to the rage to quantify. This was, he says, the shift to visualization. With the printing press, large numbers of people moved from oral to literate culture; with increasingly complicated polyphony, composers found need for musical notation; painters, in an effort to bring depth to their work, applied geometry to make the third dimension visual on a flat plane; and merchants eschewed memory for the more reliable double-entry bookkeeping. Crosby's argument is, of course, much subtler (not to mention more entertaining) than this grossly simplified outline. It is a joy for anyone interested in why we think the way we think. (Jan.)

Library Journal

Crosby, who has written on the biological reasons Europeans were such successful imperialists, here expands on those reasons. He argues that even more fundamental and earlier than biology, Europeans began to think of reality in quantitative terms more than any other people in the world and thus became the world's leaders in science, technology, navigation, armaments, business, bureaucracy, music, and painting. (LJ 1/97) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Both of these highly original books deal with modern perceptions of time. Sherman (English, Washington Univ., St. Louis) focuses on changes in clock technology and the innovations in English prose structure that occurred simultaneously. Crosby (Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge Univ., 1986) aims to be broader in scope, treating perceptions of reality in space, mathematics, bookkeeping, painting, and music, as well as time; by "reality," he means "everything material within time and space and those two dimensions per se." Crosby studies the period that witnessed the shift from a qualitative and descriptive to a quantitative approach to analysis. Both books under review rest on wide and deep reading in many disciplines. Sherman structures his argument around four literary works: Pepys's Diary, Addison and Steele's Spectator, Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. So encyclopedic is Crosby's reading in the primary and secondary literature from the ancient world to the present that it would be perilous to pinpoint his basic sources. While Crosby writes in an easy, chatty style punctuated with fascinating questions (why do cats north of the equator chase mice, but cats south of the equator do not?) appealing to the general reader as well as the scholar, Sherman's style is more ponderous, and the book is clearly intended for the specialist in English. Both books make valuable contributions to the current discussion on cultural studies.-Bennett D. Hill, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.

The New York Times

Mr. Crosby tracks a magnificent journey, from the introspective mentality of the early Middle Ages, which willingly tolerated ignorance and lack of precision, to a mentality that conceived of the physical universe in visual and quantitative terms.... Mr. Crosby tells a heroic story of discovery and change that many readers will turn to for enlightenment. -- The New York Times Book Review

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