ABSTRACT
If, by an astonishing feat of technological precocity, it had been possible to lodge our Venetian ambassador in a deep freeze in 1500 and then to defrost him around 1800, what changes would this long-suffering observer have noticed in the European world (‘Europe in 1500’ in Part I; Appendix Maps 1-2)? He would certainly have been greatly shocked to learn that not merely Europeans but all inhabitants of the planet now lived in a different universe, a heliocentRic rather than a geocentRic one, in which the same laws of physics obtained everywhere, in defiance of Aristotle’s view that there were radical differences between the earth and the other planets (‘The Scientific Revolution’ in Part IV).
