In the past few posts I have been focusing on clocks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The human desire to tell time runs very deeply, of course, and has an amazingly long history. It is also one of the central parts of the story of who we are and, I believe, how our minds developed. Tonight I just want to focus on one bit of it, as a way to focus attention on the importance of time in evolution of culture and cognition.
About thirty years ago, I became aware of the work of Alexander Marshack. Over a number of years, from the sixties to the nineties, he carefully researched and sought to explain a variety of artifacts, in bone or stone, showing careful groupings of markings. Because these had some aspects that indicated that they were more than mere tallies, that is there seemed to be some differentiation in the markings, he came to the conclusion that they might be numeric notations, almost certainly representing some sort of lunar calendars.
His thesis was controversial because of the age of these artifacts. Some of them date back almost 30,000 years. In other words if Marshack had it right, we have been keeping careful track of time for 300 centuries. Incidentally, it means that we could count well that far in the past.
Now let us pause for a moment and consider what this might mean. It inidcates that we have been aware of passing time, and must have had language for it, for about six times longer than we have had writing. Likewise, we have had some concept of numbers six times longer than we have been writing. There is in fact a school of thought, largely based on the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat, that the earliest writing, cuneiform, arose out of an accounting system based on fired-clay tokens stored in clay envelopes. (Since the tokens could only be gotten too by breaking the envelopes she argues that it became common to make impressions of the tokens in the clay before they were placed inside and the envelope was fired. Later the tokens were replaced by markings made with a stylus. There are a lot of problems with all of this, and it may not be a full explanation of the origin of writing, but we do know that writing long remained largely a vehicle for taking inventories and settling debts.)
Around the time we began to alter our sense of time with the clock, Europeans were learning the concept of zero with the very slow spread of Hindu-Arabic numerals and changing their record keeping by developing double-entry bookkeeping. These are aspects of the information revolution that marked the years between 1300 and 1600 that we need to keep in mind. But, and here is the point to which I wish to direct your attention, and whose importance is only beginning to dawn on me, these represent changes in our cognition. I am not yet sure how large these changes were, nor am I sure how they fit into the larger pattern of changes wrought by technology, art, and humanism in those years; nevertheless, given what has followed, I think it worth pondering what changes to our minds were wrought by something as seemingly insignificant as the ticking of the clock and the notation of nothing (zero).
Further Reading:
There is a good, brief essay about Marshack's work by a friend and collaborator of his, Michael Hudson, from UMKC - "After the Ice Age: How Calendar-keeping shaped Early Social Structuring."
For Denise Schmandt-Besserat, see her web page at the University of Texas.
Showing posts with label clocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clocks. Show all posts
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
A Matter of Timing
If mechanical clocks had not been invented when they were, would they have eventually been developed? A friend of mine insists they would have been; I am inclined to agree, but am not certain of when. The idea of equal hours was already in existence, for time candles were based on it, and those had been around since at least the ninth century. Sand glasses were invented about the same time as the mechanical clock and were also based on equal hours. Very elaborate clepsydras (water clocks) had been built that moved figures around to tell time. They were in many ways similar to mechanical clocks, but they were terribly prone to error due to temperature variation. In all likelihood, the idea of falling water gave rise to the idea that a clock could be built using falling weights. (Spring-driven clocks came a bit later.) But here's the thing: elaborate clepsydras had been known and built for well over a thousand years, but prior to the thirteenth century, we know of no attempt to build a weight-driven clock.
So, the question is, when would this have been done? We cannot know. It might have waited a few decades or a few hundred years. The medieval and Renaissance mind was fertile when it came to inventions. Perhaps only the needs of long-distance navigation would have forced the issue. In that case the outcome of Cloudesley Shovell's demise might not have been the race to create the chronometer, but the race to invent a simple clock. The idea of the watchmaker God (God conceived of as a craftsman who built and wound up the world, then sat back and watched it go) would then not have arisen in the previous century, and an important underpinning of the philosophy and science of the early modern world would have been missing. That leads to the unknowable question, what would have replaced it? Would it have taken philosophy and science in a different direction?
Matters of timing are important. We have a good idea of what happens when an invention comes along before the world is ready. Ada Lovelace wrote what is now considered the first computer program in 1842-1843, but the machine for which it was written was never completed, and her effort produced no fruits for over a century. They remain in the realm of inspiring historical curiosities. What we lack is a good idea of what happens to inventions that are born late. Even more importantly, we have difficulty imagining how the lack of one idea at a critical time, perhaps an idea inspired by an invention, might have affected history, but that is a subject for consideration at another time.
So, the question is, when would this have been done? We cannot know. It might have waited a few decades or a few hundred years. The medieval and Renaissance mind was fertile when it came to inventions. Perhaps only the needs of long-distance navigation would have forced the issue. In that case the outcome of Cloudesley Shovell's demise might not have been the race to create the chronometer, but the race to invent a simple clock. The idea of the watchmaker God (God conceived of as a craftsman who built and wound up the world, then sat back and watched it go) would then not have arisen in the previous century, and an important underpinning of the philosophy and science of the early modern world would have been missing. That leads to the unknowable question, what would have replaced it? Would it have taken philosophy and science in a different direction?
Matters of timing are important. We have a good idea of what happens when an invention comes along before the world is ready. Ada Lovelace wrote what is now considered the first computer program in 1842-1843, but the machine for which it was written was never completed, and her effort produced no fruits for over a century. They remain in the realm of inspiring historical curiosities. What we lack is a good idea of what happens to inventions that are born late. Even more importantly, we have difficulty imagining how the lack of one idea at a critical time, perhaps an idea inspired by an invention, might have affected history, but that is a subject for consideration at another time.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Counterclockwise
I want to try a thought experiment. What if the mechanical (weight- or spring-driven) clock had not been invented, or had failed to gain acceptance? This is known as a counterfactual (or a what-if), as it runs contrary to events. Exercises of this sort are useful for getting a better grasp on the real consequences of an event, or in this case, a technology.
So let us suppose that, at the end of the thirteenth century, the mechanical clock was unknown and was not subsequently invented. This does not mean that there were no timekeeping devices, or that there were no geared devices of any sort. There were sundials and water clocks (clepsydras), as there had been since ancient times. There were time candles, known at least as far back as the ninth century. There may or may not have been sandglasses. One of the curious things about the history of timekeeping is that mechanical clocks and sandglasses appear in the record at about the same time. For short timings, the sorts of things we might use an egg timer for today, Europeans would recite a given number of Paternosters (Lord's Prayers).
Of these methods, the sandglass and the time candle were the only ones to keep constant time with equal minutes or hours. Both were used more for timing than for telling time, though sandglasses would be used by ships for centuries to time a watch, which normally consisted of eight "glasses" turned every half-hour. Time candles seem to have been rare. They maintained a constant time by the simple expedient of marking them at fixed intervals.
Sundials were incapable of keeping equal hours as they were in fact based on the unequal hours of the sun itself. Clepsydras could be geared to work with an escapement, like a mechanical clock in fact, and so could be made to keep standard hours if desired. The Chinese had in fact created at least one water clock of this sort, but they had not followed up on it. Most water clocks were far simpler, and while they could be made to ring an alarm, like a mechanical clock, they were based on how much water would flow through an opening in a given time, thus moving a float. They were not given to unequal hours in the same way as a sundial, but they were unequal due to temperature fluctuations that affected the flow of water, particularly in winter.
It seems unlikely that equal hours would have caught on, or would have taken much longer to catch on, without the mechanical clock. Conceivably some form of clepsydra, like the one known Chinese example, might have been used for monastic or town clocks, but it would have been awkward in a bell tower and useless in much of northern Europe. Without equal hours, time would have continued to move according to the natural rhythms of the sun and the seasons. Work routines would not have been disrupted in the 1380s and after.
Quite possibly the idea of standardized measurements would have been weakened. I may be mistaken, but standard hours were the first measurement to have been constant over a long period across most of Europe. There were no time zones, so the actual time varied from place to place, according to when noon occurred, but the length of an hour became fixed long before other international measurements.
The sciences would have progressed more slowly, or followed a different path. As the accuracy of mechanical clocks increased, fine timing became vital both to astronomy and experimental science. By the end of the seventeenth century, seconds had become critical and for a few experiments, very accurate clocks that measured one one-thousandth of a minute were in use. If the examples of standardized minutes had not been available, would other kinds of standardized measurements have been postponed as well? Would scientists today still be making mistakes in converting English, French, and German inches, feet, and pounds back and forth?
The implications of not having equal seconds, hours, and minutes do not end there. No digital electronic device, and many analog ones, including televisions, would work. Telecommunications as we know it could not exist. Railway and flight schedules would be a nightmare, as varying lengths of hours at different longitudes and a lack of uniform time zones would mean that timetables would have to be recalculated constantly for a myriad of departure locations and destinations. Of course navigation would be just as hard, for while it is possible to go north or south without knowing the time, all east-west travel (moving from one longitude to another) requires knowing the time as precisely as possible. A few minutes error can be catastrophic, as Sir Cloudesley Shovell and his men discovered when their ships were lost due to the inability of the navigators to correctly calculate the longitude in 1707. They found themselves in the Scilly Isles, rather than off the coast of Brittany, in a storm. Only after chronometers were introduced was this sort of thing avoidable. Sailing ships only travelled at a few miles per hour. Imagine the navigational errors in a jet flying a hundred times as fast.
We would simply not have the modern world in any recognizable form without mechanical clocks. They are one of those central inventions that not only had a direct effect on civilization, but had a tremendous knock-on effect (like a cue-ball sending billiard balls in several directions) as well. I have only scratched the surface of the possibilities here, and barely mentioned the cognitive effects, which might have been even more profound.
So let us suppose that, at the end of the thirteenth century, the mechanical clock was unknown and was not subsequently invented. This does not mean that there were no timekeeping devices, or that there were no geared devices of any sort. There were sundials and water clocks (clepsydras), as there had been since ancient times. There were time candles, known at least as far back as the ninth century. There may or may not have been sandglasses. One of the curious things about the history of timekeeping is that mechanical clocks and sandglasses appear in the record at about the same time. For short timings, the sorts of things we might use an egg timer for today, Europeans would recite a given number of Paternosters (Lord's Prayers).
Of these methods, the sandglass and the time candle were the only ones to keep constant time with equal minutes or hours. Both were used more for timing than for telling time, though sandglasses would be used by ships for centuries to time a watch, which normally consisted of eight "glasses" turned every half-hour. Time candles seem to have been rare. They maintained a constant time by the simple expedient of marking them at fixed intervals.
Sundials were incapable of keeping equal hours as they were in fact based on the unequal hours of the sun itself. Clepsydras could be geared to work with an escapement, like a mechanical clock in fact, and so could be made to keep standard hours if desired. The Chinese had in fact created at least one water clock of this sort, but they had not followed up on it. Most water clocks were far simpler, and while they could be made to ring an alarm, like a mechanical clock, they were based on how much water would flow through an opening in a given time, thus moving a float. They were not given to unequal hours in the same way as a sundial, but they were unequal due to temperature fluctuations that affected the flow of water, particularly in winter.
It seems unlikely that equal hours would have caught on, or would have taken much longer to catch on, without the mechanical clock. Conceivably some form of clepsydra, like the one known Chinese example, might have been used for monastic or town clocks, but it would have been awkward in a bell tower and useless in much of northern Europe. Without equal hours, time would have continued to move according to the natural rhythms of the sun and the seasons. Work routines would not have been disrupted in the 1380s and after.
Quite possibly the idea of standardized measurements would have been weakened. I may be mistaken, but standard hours were the first measurement to have been constant over a long period across most of Europe. There were no time zones, so the actual time varied from place to place, according to when noon occurred, but the length of an hour became fixed long before other international measurements.
The sciences would have progressed more slowly, or followed a different path. As the accuracy of mechanical clocks increased, fine timing became vital both to astronomy and experimental science. By the end of the seventeenth century, seconds had become critical and for a few experiments, very accurate clocks that measured one one-thousandth of a minute were in use. If the examples of standardized minutes had not been available, would other kinds of standardized measurements have been postponed as well? Would scientists today still be making mistakes in converting English, French, and German inches, feet, and pounds back and forth?
The implications of not having equal seconds, hours, and minutes do not end there. No digital electronic device, and many analog ones, including televisions, would work. Telecommunications as we know it could not exist. Railway and flight schedules would be a nightmare, as varying lengths of hours at different longitudes and a lack of uniform time zones would mean that timetables would have to be recalculated constantly for a myriad of departure locations and destinations. Of course navigation would be just as hard, for while it is possible to go north or south without knowing the time, all east-west travel (moving from one longitude to another) requires knowing the time as precisely as possible. A few minutes error can be catastrophic, as Sir Cloudesley Shovell and his men discovered when their ships were lost due to the inability of the navigators to correctly calculate the longitude in 1707. They found themselves in the Scilly Isles, rather than off the coast of Brittany, in a storm. Only after chronometers were introduced was this sort of thing avoidable. Sailing ships only travelled at a few miles per hour. Imagine the navigational errors in a jet flying a hundred times as fast.
We would simply not have the modern world in any recognizable form without mechanical clocks. They are one of those central inventions that not only had a direct effect on civilization, but had a tremendous knock-on effect (like a cue-ball sending billiard balls in several directions) as well. I have only scratched the surface of the possibilities here, and barely mentioned the cognitive effects, which might have been even more profound.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Mediated Senses
This morning, I saw an "Infographics Feature" from the MIT Technology Review with the portentous title, "The Mobile Device Is Becoming Humankind's Primary Tool." One of the graphs shows that there will soon be almost as many cell phones and mobile devices in the world as there are people. It then goes on to illustrate what surveys show about how those devices are used.
Also, a friend, in response to yesterday's post on "Horses and Biplanes" sent me a piece about railroads and the introduction of time zones from Wired, "Nov. 18, 1883: Railroad Time Goes Coast to Coast." He was struck by how difficult it was to get everyone's time synchronized and the scale of problems this caused.
Those two pieces do not have much to do with each other superficially, but they do share a link. The MIT feature is about how smartphones and other mobile devices are coming to mediate our interactions with reality. The Wired piece is about a juncture when technology greatly increased its role in mediating one of our senses - time. Likewise, "Horses and Biplanes" ended by observing that our digitally mediated environment might be affecting our ability to understand the embodied past. It might make it easier to understand it in an abstract way, but at the same time it makes it harder for us to identify with the physical and sensory experiences of our ancestors.
Clocks in the fourteenth century were the first complex machines to mediate between one of our senses and the world. Earlier, language, writing, art, and calendars had all played roles in mediating reality, but with the invention of mechanical time keeping, I suspect a fundamental change occurred. Today our sense of time is almost wholly artificial and our trust in instrumentation is nearly complete. (I am reminded of those stories of people who have driven their cars into creeks and ponds because their GPS system told them that there was a road or bridge that did not exist.) That would have been essentially inconceivable in the 1380s, but one of the effects of clocks on history, it seems to me, is that it made us more amenable to trusting devices more than our senses.
Also, a friend, in response to yesterday's post on "Horses and Biplanes" sent me a piece about railroads and the introduction of time zones from Wired, "Nov. 18, 1883: Railroad Time Goes Coast to Coast." He was struck by how difficult it was to get everyone's time synchronized and the scale of problems this caused.
Those two pieces do not have much to do with each other superficially, but they do share a link. The MIT feature is about how smartphones and other mobile devices are coming to mediate our interactions with reality. The Wired piece is about a juncture when technology greatly increased its role in mediating one of our senses - time. Likewise, "Horses and Biplanes" ended by observing that our digitally mediated environment might be affecting our ability to understand the embodied past. It might make it easier to understand it in an abstract way, but at the same time it makes it harder for us to identify with the physical and sensory experiences of our ancestors.
Clocks in the fourteenth century were the first complex machines to mediate between one of our senses and the world. Earlier, language, writing, art, and calendars had all played roles in mediating reality, but with the invention of mechanical time keeping, I suspect a fundamental change occurred. Today our sense of time is almost wholly artificial and our trust in instrumentation is nearly complete. (I am reminded of those stories of people who have driven their cars into creeks and ponds because their GPS system told them that there was a road or bridge that did not exist.) That would have been essentially inconceivable in the 1380s, but one of the effects of clocks on history, it seems to me, is that it made us more amenable to trusting devices more than our senses.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Clocks and the Brain
We know that time perceptions changed with the coming of the clock but were not instantaneous. Rather they were a slow, even glacial series of revolutions, as Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift would have it (Glennie and Thrift, 162). Nevertheless, there were significant changes underway by 1400 and which were fully elaborated by 1500. These, if I understand the neuropsychology summarized by Iain McGilchrist correctly, should have already begun to have an effect on brain organization (McGilchrist, 74-77). They may have applied more to the elites and certain professions (sailors and merchants, for instance) but appear to have been widespread.
To begin with, we need to recognize different kinds of time. There is natural, experiential time through which we maintain a continuous, narrative flow of sensations in context. This is strongly associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. Damage to the right posterior cortex can cause a loss of this continuous time and impair the ability to understand narratives. McGilchrist likens this to Capgras Syndome, also caused by right hemispheric deficits. In the case of Capgras, the same individual seen at different times in different moods or with a different haircut is perceived as a different person, usually an impostor (McGilchrist, 54). The person affected with Capgras sees only differences and cannot properly connect other people seen in different contexts or times. Individuals with damage to the right posterior cortex, likewise, often cannot connect things that happen at different times or even sequentially.
The second kind of time, time experienced as discrete units (hours, minutes, seconds), is largely the province of the left hemisphere. The more abstract the perception of time, the more the left hemisphere is involved. Glennie and Thrift go so far as to argue there are many different kinds of clock time, depending on factors such as how important it is to know the precise time and how easily it is to get the correct time. These would still all be left-hemispheric functions, I believe, and greater precision should be generally related to greater abstraction. Likewise, linear time appears to be a more abstract experience than cyclical time. It arises as a major point of view only in a few societies, and it primarily associated with the monotheistic religions of the Middle East and Europe.
Prior to 1300, time for most people was cyclical and continuous (Berman, 306, notes 7 & 9). Linear time was part of Christianity, but was primarily of interest to clerics. Even the yearly cycle of saint's days and feasts, drawn from the linear history of Christianity, would have reinforced the cycle of the seasons.
In the thirteenth century, before the spread of clocks, civil statutes and other documents expressed time in terms of the sun and the canonical hours (such as Prime, Terce, Sext, and None, which varied in length according to the season) that were rung on church bells. By the early fourteenth century, at Bristol, regulations of the port, market, and trade were using the standardized (unvarying) hours struck by a clock (Glennie and Thrift, 172). By the end of the century, artisans were also denoting time in this way in depositions. Less than a century later, clock time was common in correspondence (173) and it was not uncommon to record important events down to the quarter of an hour (181 & n. 60).
So what can we make of all this. Obviously men and women did not suddenly lose their sense of continuous, narrative time. Over the course of these two centuries, and the two that followed (when minutes and seconds first became important, they were gradually developing that portion of the left brain associated with abstract time and abstract analysis to a greater degree than in the past. I believe this happened across the board, from peasants to kings. This goes along with many other aspects of the Renaissance information revolution, although other aspects of it ran in the contrary direction. Because human perception of time is so central to understanding the world, it is critical to our ability to comprehend the minds and perceptions of our ancestors. We cannot build up a nuance portrait without this kind of knowledge.
Sources:
Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift, "Revolutions in the Times," in David N. Livingstone and Charles W.J. Withers, eds., Geography and Revolution. University of Chicago Press, 2005, 161-198.
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press, 2009.
Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World. Cornell University Press, 1981.
To begin with, we need to recognize different kinds of time. There is natural, experiential time through which we maintain a continuous, narrative flow of sensations in context. This is strongly associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. Damage to the right posterior cortex can cause a loss of this continuous time and impair the ability to understand narratives. McGilchrist likens this to Capgras Syndome, also caused by right hemispheric deficits. In the case of Capgras, the same individual seen at different times in different moods or with a different haircut is perceived as a different person, usually an impostor (McGilchrist, 54). The person affected with Capgras sees only differences and cannot properly connect other people seen in different contexts or times. Individuals with damage to the right posterior cortex, likewise, often cannot connect things that happen at different times or even sequentially.
The second kind of time, time experienced as discrete units (hours, minutes, seconds), is largely the province of the left hemisphere. The more abstract the perception of time, the more the left hemisphere is involved. Glennie and Thrift go so far as to argue there are many different kinds of clock time, depending on factors such as how important it is to know the precise time and how easily it is to get the correct time. These would still all be left-hemispheric functions, I believe, and greater precision should be generally related to greater abstraction. Likewise, linear time appears to be a more abstract experience than cyclical time. It arises as a major point of view only in a few societies, and it primarily associated with the monotheistic religions of the Middle East and Europe.
Prior to 1300, time for most people was cyclical and continuous (Berman, 306, notes 7 & 9). Linear time was part of Christianity, but was primarily of interest to clerics. Even the yearly cycle of saint's days and feasts, drawn from the linear history of Christianity, would have reinforced the cycle of the seasons.
In the thirteenth century, before the spread of clocks, civil statutes and other documents expressed time in terms of the sun and the canonical hours (such as Prime, Terce, Sext, and None, which varied in length according to the season) that were rung on church bells. By the early fourteenth century, at Bristol, regulations of the port, market, and trade were using the standardized (unvarying) hours struck by a clock (Glennie and Thrift, 172). By the end of the century, artisans were also denoting time in this way in depositions. Less than a century later, clock time was common in correspondence (173) and it was not uncommon to record important events down to the quarter of an hour (181 & n. 60).
So what can we make of all this. Obviously men and women did not suddenly lose their sense of continuous, narrative time. Over the course of these two centuries, and the two that followed (when minutes and seconds first became important, they were gradually developing that portion of the left brain associated with abstract time and abstract analysis to a greater degree than in the past. I believe this happened across the board, from peasants to kings. This goes along with many other aspects of the Renaissance information revolution, although other aspects of it ran in the contrary direction. Because human perception of time is so central to understanding the world, it is critical to our ability to comprehend the minds and perceptions of our ancestors. We cannot build up a nuance portrait without this kind of knowledge.
Sources:
Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift, "Revolutions in the Times," in David N. Livingstone and Charles W.J. Withers, eds., Geography and Revolution. University of Chicago Press, 2005, 161-198.
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press, 2009.
Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World. Cornell University Press, 1981.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Clock Time
Clocks are one of those things that affect a great many others. In the case of clocks, it is because they affect one of our fundamental perceptions: time. But in the beginning, I think they had a second effect, changing, or perhaps sharpening, our common understanding of cause and effect. For a period of about five hundred years the clock was the most complex device in existence, certainly the most complex one most people would ever encounter. It was also understandable. One could look at the clockworks, big or small, and have their arcane processes explained. One thing followed logically after another. Effect followed cause; all was visible, orderly, and explicable. Is it any wonder that it would become a model for the universe and the divine order?
For the small percentage of humanity living in European towns, clock time came to replace nature as the timekeeper from the 1380s onward. No longer did hours vary in length with the seasons. They were uniform; urban workers were now expected to work the same length of time each day regardless of the month or the changing length of daylight.
Humankind was learning to live to an artificial rhythm, one at odds with the world around them but also with their own circadian rhythms. One wonders if they did not also become more irritable. People also became more used to breaking things up into units, into atomizing their experiences.
New geographies of time emerged. This was not immediate, and for the first century or two was communal, private citizens could rarely afford clocks, and watches were unknown before 1500. But clocks became smaller and more accurate, slowly making their way into homes, first of nobles, then of the bourgeoisie. The minute, the hour, and the day were mapped not on the sun and the moon, but on the clock. As clocks increased in accuracy, minutes began to matter.
These changes coincided with the emergence of humanist notions of historical time and time periods. Religion and mythology had long constructed chronologies with different ages in them, but these were not historical time periods. Typically, all of history was one and continuous. The Renaissance began to see that there were discontinuities and that the ancient world and the modern world were not one seamless whole. Through the work of men like Bruni, the differences came to be understood and appreciated.
So it was not only the daily sense of time that was being altered in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It seems to me that the entire human sense of time was changing radically in those years. Likewise, I would argue that both clocks and the new understanding of history were creating a broader command of causality, one that would come to rely less-and-less on divine intervention. These were important changes in the mental processes of Renaissance Europeans.
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