ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some instances of what might be called the unconscious technical roots of science, that is, the information about, the practical mastery of nature that was to be found in printed books before the beginning of the seventeenth century, and which might have been supplemented by actual visits to shipyards, workshops and foundries, and talks with those who worked in such places. Though the perspective in which science regards nature changed markedly in the sixteenth century, it was only in the seventeenth century that a significant qualitative change occurred in the image itself, to which the technical resources used by Galileo contributed profoundly. The renaissance of science in the sixteenth century, and the strategic ideas of the first phase of the scientific revolution, owed little to improvements in the actual technique of investigation. The idea of science as a product of the laboratory is indeed one of the creations of the scientific revolution.
