On Medieval Time

November 8, 2023 timothywstanley@me.com

The thinking man’s timepiece was the astrolabe, first developed in Greece but significantly improved by Arab astronomers and mathematicians in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The instrument comprised a stack of concentric brass plates, carved with the celestial sphere. By rotating the top plate, simulating the motion of the heavens, it was possible to take readings that could reveal the positions of stars, the distances between astral bodies and the phase of the moon. It could also be used to tell the time of day at a certain latitude, based on the altitude of the sun and the calendar date... The scholastic philosopher Nicholas Oresme, at the end of the 14th century, was the first writer to imagine the universe as a vast mechanical clock, in which ‘all the wheels move as harmoniously as possible.’ But the metaphor could be turned inside out: earthly clocks were made by fallible humans. The writer of ‘Dives and Pauper’, a 15th-century devotional treatise, was keen to point out that the apparent neutrality of mechanical movement was a façade: ‘in citees & townes men rule them[selves] by the clock, and yet properly to speke the clock ruleth not them but a man ruleth the clock.’

Tom Johnson, “Take That, Astrolab “ - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/tom-johnson/take-that-astrolabe. Interesting summary of timepieces and their implications for ways of thinking and being.