BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN TOWN AND GOWN

It is worth pausing over the fact that a new kind of collaborative venture in data collection had been set in motion even before laboratory facilities were built or new observational instruments had been invented. The shift from script to print helps to explain why old theories were found wanting and new ones devised even before telescopes, microscopes, and scientific societies had appeared. Gutenberg's invention not only preceded Galileo's tube; it was a more versatile aid and affected a wider range of data. Some professors shunned controversy and withheld treatises from the press just as some refused at first to look through the telescope. But none failed to consult printed reference guides or preferred to have to copy out tables by hand. Whatever views were held concerning Aristotle, Ptolemy or Galen, whatever objections were posed against using vernaculars or courting publicity; printed maps, charts, and diagrams found rapid acceptance from all. Indeed Latin-reading professional groups profited from new kinds of book learning just as much as did untutored artisans. In view of the many new printed treatises that William Gilbert consulted, for example, it is somewhat misleading to describe De Magnete as being based ‘Only on observations and experiment.’ Gilbert probably gleaned as much useful data from reading technical works composed by others as from observing and experimenting on his own. That Tycho Brahe and Isaac Newton could learn so much by reading on their own also had significant consequences for their work.