(^204) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
tailed not only repeated and repeatable observation, but deliberate
simplification as a window on the complex. Want to find the relations
between time, speed, and distance-covered of falling objects? Slow
them by rolling them down an inclined plane.
Scientists had to see better and could do so once the telescope and
microscope were invented (c. 1600), opening new worlds comparable
for wonder and power to the earlier geographical discoveries. They
needed to measure more precisely, because the smallest shift of a
pointer could make all the difference. So Pedro Nunez, professor of as
tronomy and mathematics in the University of Coimbra (Portugal), in
vented in the early sixteenth century the nonius (from his latinized
name), to give navigational and astronomical readings to a fraction of
a degree. This was later improved by the vernier scale (Pierre Vernier,
1580-1637), and this in turn was followed by the invention of the mi
crometer (Gascoigne, 1639, but long ignored; and Adrien Auzout,
1666), which used fine wires for reading and a screw (rather than a
slide) to achieve close control. The result was measures to the tenth
and less of a millimeter that substantially enhanced astronomical accu
racy.^11 (Note that just learning to make precision screws was a major
achievement; also that the usefulness of these instruments depended
pardy on eyeglasses and magnifying lenses.)
The same pursuit of precision marked the development of time mea
surement. Astronomers and physicists needed to time events to the
minute and second, and Christian Huygens gave that to them with the
invention of the pendulum clock in 1657 and the balance spring in
- Scientists also needed to calculate better and faster, and here
John Napier's logarithms were as important in their day as the inven
tion of the abacus in an earlier time, or of calculators and computers
later.^12 And they needed more powerful tools of mathematical analy
sis, which they got from René Descartes's analytic geometry and, even
more, from the new calculus of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm
von Leibniz. These new maths contributed immensely to experiment
and analysis.
Routinization: The third institutional pillar of Western science was
the routinization of discovery, the invention of invention. Here was a
widely dispersed population of intellectuals, working in different lands,
using different vernaculars—and yet a community. What happened in
one place was quickly known everywhere else, pardy thanks to a com
mon language of learning, Latin; partly to a precocious development
of courier and mail services; most of all because people were moving
in all directions. In the seventeenth century, these links were institu-