ABSTRACT
It would be a mistake, we said, to give named individuals-Petrarca, Columbus, Copernicus or anyone else-the credit for the new perspectives that suddenly opened up in Europe around the year 1500. Although individuals make history, they never make it in the manner of their own choosing and, above all, without access to technologies of reflection even the most imaginative person will have little impact. Yet technology in and of itself is never enough. In order to make a difference, the technology must first be put to efficient use and this can only be done if it is embedded in a social organisation of some kind. The technology must be institutionalised, as it were.
