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ABSTRACT
It is something of a commonplace that the presence of clockwork throughout early modern Europe was a key technological factor in inspiring an approach to investigation of the natural world characteristic of the New Science and the so-called Mechanical Philosophy. I challenge that truism on two grounds. One is that attempts to account for organic processes by appeal to working artefacts typically drew less on clockwork than on so-called pneumatic devices. Given the importance of explaining the functioning of organisms to any thoroughgoing account of the workings of nature, an analogue that depends on rigid intersecting toothed wheels, springs or pendula had limited ability to suggest how biological nature functions. By contrast, pneumatic devices – working by pressure of water, trapped air and steam – offered resources to suggest how crucial functions of organisms might be designed to work without ongoing intelligent direction. The other is that the appeal to wind-up devices as a model for the independent functioning of the natural world can be found in texts predating the invention of clockwork. Clockwork was both unnecessary and insufficient to indicate how nature might function unassisted.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful for helpful comments from anonymous reviewers for this journal, and to Professors Alan Gabbey and Johan Thom for discussion and helpful comments.
Notes
1 See also Westfall, Science and Religion, 73; Macey, Clocks and the Cosmos, 69; Edgerton, Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry, 18; Mahoney, “Drawing Machines”; Dear, Intelligibility of Nature, 16; Riskin, Restless Clock; cf. Meli, Mechanism, 17.
2 The characterization here is intentionally nominal. A conception would count as ‘mechanistic’ if it draws on the discipline known as ‘mechanics’: Berryman, Mechanical Hypothesis.
3 White, Medieval Technology, Medieval Religion, dated the invention to the mid-fourteenth century; Mayr, Automatic Machinery, 201n2, 204n3, placed it half century earlier. Hill, History of Engineering, 245, affirms that the precise date is unknown, but must lie between 1271 and 1348.
4 Boyle, Works, vol. 8, 326–327. Boas, “Mechanical Philosophy”; Gabbey, “Reflections on the Historiography”; “Mechanical Philosophers”; “What was ‘Mechanical’?”; Anstey, Robert Boyle; Garber, “Descartes, Mechanics”, “Remarks on the Pre-history”. See the exchange between Newman, “Reply to Chalmers” and Chalmers, “Newman Tried”, “Philosophy Versus Experiment”, on the question whether Boyle saw ‘mechanical philosophy’ in empirical and analogical terms, or as the a priori imposition of a particular substantive conception of matter.
5 Compare Dear, Intelligibility of Nature, 14, for the recognition that judgements of intelligibility may be culturally specific.
6 Anstey, Robert Boyle; Gabbey, “What was ‘Mechanical’?”; Newman, “Reply to Chalmers”; Garber, “Remarks on the Pre-History”; compare Chalmers, “Newman Tried”, “Philosophy Versus Experiment”. For the notion that, despite Harvey’s comparison of the heart to a pump, he is still embedded in a fundamentally Aristotelian framework, see Distelzweig, “William Harvey’s Anatomy”. Teleologists can use mechanical comparisons while doubting the ‘mechanical hypothesis,’ i.e. the idea that they might be sufficient.
7 In De Augmentis Scientarum 3.5; cited by Boas, “Hero’s Pneumatica”, 42. Hero’s Pneumatica was published in Latin in 1575, and subsequently in vernacular translations.
8 Boyle glosses ‘mechanics’ by listing “Centrobarricks, Hydraulics, Pneumaticks, Hydrostatics, Balisticks, &c” alongside weight-lifting technology: quoted in Gabbey, “What was ‘Mechanical’?”, 22. The term ‘centrobarricks’, otherwise unintelligible in English, is a simple transliteration of Archimedes’ term for centres of gravity, a notion linking the study of hydraulic phenomena to the theory of the balance and lever.
9 The connection of the brain to the limbs via the nervous system, thought to be mediated by pneuma in the nerves, was hypothesized by the Hellenistic doctor Herophilus: see von Staden, Herophilus.
10 Galen, Nat Fac.: see Longrigg, Greek Rational Medicine; von Staden, Herophilus, “Body and Machine”, “Teleology and Mechanism”; Berryman, “Galen”; “Imitation of Life”.
11 On the importance of On the Natural Faculties in the seventeenth century, see Boas, “Mechanical Philosophy”.
12 Although the invention is ascribed to Archimedes, Ctesibius may have been intended.
13 Specta portentosissimam Archimedis munificentiam, organum hydraulicum dico, tot membra, tot partes, tot compagines, tot itinera vocum, tot compendia sonorum, tot commercia modorum, tot acies tibiarum, et una moles erunt omnia. Sic et spiritus, qui illic de tormento aquae anhelat, non ideo separabitur in partes, quia per partes administratur, substantia quidem solidus, opera vero divisus. Non longe hoc exemplum est a Stratone, et Aenesidemo et Heraclito; nam et ipsi unitatem animae tuentur, quae in totum corpus diffusa et ubique ipsa, velut flatus in calamo per cavernas … . De anima 14, Sharples, “Strato of Lampsacus”, 139–141.
14 The reference to Heraclitus is unlikely, and that to Aenesidemus puzzling: see Sharples, “Strato of Lampsacus”, 145. Strato is, however, a very likely source for the comparison, given his known interests and connections to Alexandrian medicine: see Von Staden, Herophilus; Leith, “Herophilus and Erasistratus”; Berryman, “Hellenistic Medicine”.
15 White, Medieval Religion, 248–249, notes the importance of organs.
16 On the confusion of clepsydrae with clockwork, see White, Medieval Religion, 220n15, 124n3; Hill, Medieval Islamic Technology, 20; Truitt, Medieval Robots, 124. On page 143, Truitt notes the derivation of the English term ‘clock’ from the Latin word for ‘bell.’
17 We do now know exactly when they were first built: he ascribes one such device to Philo of Byzantium, probably working in the late second century BCE, but it is possible that the ‘automatic puppets’ Aristotle describes were wind-up devices with a trigger-release mechanism: see below.
18 Cicero Rep. 1.14.21–3; Theon Util. 180.15; Sambursky, Physical World; Berryman, Mechanical Hypothesis; Jones, Portable Cosmos; Edmunds, “Antikythera Mechanism”, lists sphaera references in classical literature.
19 Although the manuscripts read μϵγαλότϵχνοι, Lorimer and Furley amend this to μηχανοτϵ´χναι or μηχανοποιοí cf. Thom, “ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΕΣ ΠΕΡΙ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ”, 64n99. The reference is clearly to instrument makers.
20 … ἀλλὰ τοῦτο ἦν τὸ θϵιότατον, τὸ μϵτὰ ῥᾳστώνης καὶ ἁπλῆς κινήσϵως παντοδαπὰς ἀποτϵλϵῖν ἰδέας, ὥσπϵρ ἀμέλϵι δρῶσιν οἱ μϵγαλότϵχνοι, διὰ μιᾶς ὀργάνου σχαστηρίας πολλὰς καὶ ποικίλας ἐνϵργίας ἀποτϵλοῦντϵς … οὕτως οὖν καὶ ἡ θϵία φύσις ἀπό τινος ἁπλῆς κινήσϵως τοῦ πρώτου τὴν δύναμιν ϵἰς τὰ συνϵχῆ δίδωσι καὶ ἀπ’ ϵ̓κϵίνων πάλιν ϵἰς τὰ πορρωτϵ́ρω, μϵ́χρις ἂν διὰ τοῦ παντὸς διϵξϵ́λθῃ De Mundo 398b13–23, trans. Thom, slightly modified.
21 Thom, “ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΕΣ ΠΕΡΙ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ”, 45, translates schastêria as ‘release mechanism of an engine of war.’ Although the term certainly appears in ballistics texts, we also find triggers in theatrical automata described by Hero of Alexandria, and I suggest that the theatrical context is a better fit. See Furley, “Pseudo-Aristotle De Mundo”, 391n; Hero Aut. 188, 1; 190, 6; 388,10.
22 Some, like the response of soldiers to a herald’s trumpet-call, would only work if we ascribe intelligence to the natural world. See Betegh and Gregoric, “Multiple Analogy”; Thom, “Cosmotheology”.
23 For the popularity and subsequent reception and dissemination of De Mundo, see Smith, “Reception”; Daiber, “Possible Echoes”; Takahashi, “Syriac and Arabic Transmission”; Kraye, “Authorship of De mundo”.
24 On the dissemination of mechanical texts and technology in the medieval Islamic world and the Latin West, see Hill, History of Engineering, Medieval Islamic Technology; Saliba, “Mechanical Devices”, Islamic Science; Truitt, Medieval Robots.
25 Hill, History of Engineering, 206 writes of ‘legendary tales that probably reflect some hazy knowledge of Hellenistic/Arabic automata’; Truitt details a tradition of vernacular literature describing automata that ‘appear to be impossible to make by artisanal means only’: Truitt, Medieval Robots, 67.
26 Price “Automata and the Origins of Mechanism”; Berryman, “Ancient Automata”, Mechanical Hypothesis; compare Mayor, Gods and Robots, for a critique of my views.