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Title: The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600 by Alfred W. Crosby ISBN: 0-521-63990-5 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Necessary but Inefficient
Comment: Professor Crosby has done a well written work on history of quantification and western society, but it's quite flawed on substance.
Crosby believes that there is a special "mentalite" which has driven Europeans to their "amazing success of European imperialism." He provides many examples on the "distinct" European mentalite which were not quite unique. Among them are
1) Ptolemy's grid map system which he believes to be of European Orgin. However, the Chinese scientist, Zhang heng, created the map grid system in China during Han dynasty and it was used in both city planning and navigation.
2) European double bookkeeping which he believes to be vital in European history because of its emphasis on accuracy and part of this mentalite. However, advance bookkeeping methods were also evident in merchants of the Islamic Gun Powder Empires.
In historic research, when one dedicates all his effort to find a particular trait in a culture, he will be bound to "find" it. As in Crosby's case, he tries to find this mentalite in Europe and he did find it. However, so can an Islamic, Chinese, Indian, scholar....if he looks hard enough.
Rating: 4
Summary: An overview of the shaping of a technological world.
Comment: Crosby does a fantastic job covering a vast change in the overall society changes from 1250-1600. For the amount of vast knowledge packed in you'd think the book would be 3,000 pages. He brings us an interesting approach to the actual birth and uprise of modern techonology, arts and literature as we know it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting, well-written, and enlightening
Comment: Crosby takes on a very difficult and complicated subject here and manages a book of remarkable clarity and balance. The book is lightly written and though the footnotes were a bit distracting (I'd have preferred they be set out in an appendix) it's a fast, friendly read. I would recommend it to readers with a wide range of interests from general world or medieval European history, to those interested in the roots of western business practices, music history and notation, physics, astronomy, mathematics . . . Bravo, Mr. Crosby!
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Title: Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Studies in Environment and History) by Alfred W. Crosby ISBN: 0521456908 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History by Alfred W. Crosby ISBN: 0521791588 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Trust in Numbers by Theodore M. Porter ISBN: 0691029083 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 16 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The First Industrial Revolution by Phyllis Deane ISBN: 0521296099 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1980 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine by Shigeshisa Kuriyama ISBN: 0942299892 Publisher: Zone Books Pub. Date: 15 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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