Marcus Popplow

Setting the World Machine in Motion: the Meaning of “machina mundi” in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period

The notion machina mundi is a prominent symbol of the early modern “mechanization of the world picture”. However, it is well known that this notion had already been employed since Roman Antiquity. For these early periods, its meaning has been identified not as a working mechanism, but as a stable structure that would not collapse until the end of days — even though this static construction, as a matter of course, always contained spheres in continuous movement. This raises the question about what kind of technological characteristics Medieval and early modern authors had in mind when they employed the notion machina mundi and whether it might be possible to determine with greater accuracy the historical shifts in its meaning. This issue can only be tackled by determining concrete points of reference for the metaphoric use of the term machina, that is, the technical artifacts — contemporaries employed the term for temporary wooden structures with excellent construction stability, such as scaffolding and siege towers. Only in the context of 16th-century engineering treatises did this meaning shift to include devices that continuously performed some kind of work “by themselves,” by employing some kind of gearing (when provided with a sufficient energy source).

If this interpretation is right, authors employing machina mundi before the 16th-century obviously did not refer to the world as a continuously running mechanism. At the same time, this would give the clockwork metaphor for the world initiated by Nicole Oresme in the 14th-century an even more original status than has been suggested so far.

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Marcus Popplow

Marcus Popplow is a research scholar at the chair for the History of Technology at the Brandenburg Technical University in Cottbus. After a Master thesis on the meaning of Latin machina in the Middle Ages and a dissertation on Renaissance engineers, from 1997 to 2001 he worked at the Max-Planck-Institute of Science in Berlin on interconnections between early modern technology and science. His current project at the BTU Cottbus concerns 18th-century environmental history.