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Interdisciplinary History

The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600 by Alfred W. Crosby
Review by: Steven Shapin
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 261-262
Published by: The MIT Press
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REVIEWS 26I

The questions that Achenbaum addresses in his historical narrative

are summarized in the book's introduction: Why did twentieth-century
Americans who claim(ed) expertise as researchers about aging want to
call themselves (and be recognized as) "scientists"?How has the field's
relationship to other disciplines and professions changed over time? Has
gerontology always aspired to be multidisciplinary? What factors have
facilitated and constrained institution building (2)?
In addressing these questions, Achenbaum attempts to put coher-
ence into an eclectic field-to write a biography, not of a person, but
of a "discipline" that has captured the imagination of scholars and
practitioners since the mid-40oos. The single theme that preoccupies
the author (as well as others associated with the field of gerontology) is
simple, yet profound: If the process of aging is "normal," what are its
fundamental attributes and how can we promote its acceptance in society
at large? If the process of aging is "pathological," to what extent is it
responsive to biological, medical, technological, social, and behavioral
interventions?
The field of gerontology may have crossed some frontiers, but many
other frontiers remain ahead. In fact, its definition as a science may be
limiting. Regardless of the author's presumptions in titling the book as
he did, Achenbaum has done a service by tracing the threads of a
fascinating area of both scholarship and practice.
Dail A. Neugarten
University of Colorado

The Measureof Reality: Quantificationand WesternSociety, 1250-1600. By

Alfred W. Crosby (New York, Cambridge University Press, I997)
245 pp. $24.95

This is big-picture history for a big audience. Like his previous work,
Crosby's Measureof Reality expresses his "lifelong search for explanations
for the amazing success of European imperialism." But where Ecological
Imperialism(New York, I986) sought the explanation in "biological
determinism," Crosby now performs a volte-face and embraces a robus-
tly idealist version of mentalitehistoriography: The causal finger now
points to "habits of thought" and specifically to the quantifying impulse
which, he argues, emerged strongly in Western Europe from the middle
of the thirteenth century (ix-xi).
Crosby never gets round to spelling out how quantifying habits of
thought were responsible for imperialism. He assumes that societies able
efficiently to deliver instruments of control across long distances, and
capable of operating efficient capitalist enterprises, will dominate the
world, and he identifies quantifying habits of thought and of perception
as the prime agents responsible for producing such capacities. (Neither
the will toward, nor the necessity of, imperialist expansion, nor acci-

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262 STEVEN SHAPIN

dental factors bearing on the career of European domination, receives

any systematic attention. This is "just-so" history in pure form.)
What The Measure of Reality does offer is a series of sometimes
charmingly anecdotal potted histories of European advances in logic,
mathematics, music, art, and accounting from the middle of the thir-
teenth century, all of which are said to manifest the quantifying habit
of thought, and all of which laid the groundwork for the scientific
revolution of the seventeenth century.
Much attention appears to have been given to making the book
accessible to a wide reading public. The writing style is peppy, chummy,
and sometimes breathless: concerning early Copernicanism, "The cat,
already out of the bag, was having kittens"; Ptolemy was "the ancient
Hellene without whom Western Europeans would have taken much
longer to become themselves" (I05, 97). The moral message is unabash-
edly progressivist and triumphalist: "Heroes" and "geniuses" are forever
"surging forward" and "forging ahead." (No comfort for New Histori-
cists here!) Little attention is given to competing accounts of large-scale
cultural and economic change, especially those by Marxist (as well as
non-Marxist) economic historians who have pointed to developments
in technique, and to social and economic changes, as creating both
possibilities for new action and materials for new thought.
Nevertheless, there is something profoundly right about a book that
draws historians' attention to the importance of measurement and stand-
ardization in coordinating complex activities and in extending power
over long distances. The Measureof Reality is not the last word on this
subject-indeed, it shows only patchy awareness of recent sociological
and historical work in the area-but it is a good introduction that will
doubtless get the big audience for which it was designed.
Steven Shapin
University of California, San Diego

Edited by Sheilagh C. Ogilvie and Mar-

EuropeanProto-Industrialization.
cus Cerman (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996) 274 pp.
$54.95 cloth $I9.95 paper

It has been more than twenty-five years since Mendels published the
paper that launched the concept of proto-industrialization on the schol-
arly world.1 Its success was considerable, if not immediate, and greater
in Europe than in North America. Critiques, debates, research programs,
and the present volume all testify to the value of putting a name to an
understudied form of economic activity that bridged the great transfor-
mation to a modern economy. Mendels did much more than name the
phenomenon. Indeed, so tightly did he characterize it that many scholars
i Franklin Mendels, "Proto-industrialization:The First Phase of the IndustrializationProc-
ess,"Journal of Economic History, XXXII (1972), 241-26I.

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