William Caxton

The Scientific Revolution lasted for just over a century, bounded in 1543 CE by the publication of Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres and Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687 CE. The Enlightenment followed. As was customary, these works were written in Latin, making them accessible only to a minority.

             Copernicus, through observation and analysis, challenged the long-held view that Earth was the centre of the universe with a heliocentric model, placing the Sun at the hub. After initial curiosity, the powerful clergy preferred to suppress this paradigm. Latin helped.

Galileo, aided by the invention of the telescope, supplied further evidence in support of heliocentricity by observing four of Jupiter’s moons. Clearly, not everything orbits Earth. The travails of Galileo at the hands of the Church are widely known. He infuriated the authorities by writing in the Italian vernacular, giving his work greater reach.

                Copernicus and Galileo were giants of the Scientific Revolution. Johannes Kepler was another. It was Isaac Newton who later provided the mathematical foundations.

                So, nothing significant occurred before the Scientific Revolution? Wrong. Much was being learned or relearned in northern Europe. Crafts and skills were advancing, driven by trade and weaponry. The Low Countries were vibrant, Nuremburg too, offering excellence in instrument-making and Europe’s first quality accreditation system. Vital progress in navigation and horology. Not so much in England. Plenty of sheep, wool, and woven cloth, though.

                Around then, circa 1450 CE, in Mainz, another breakthrough: Johannes Gutenberg introduced the movable-type printing press. Although used earlier in Asia, mechanised printing disseminating new scientific insights would become a potent combination. While few could read, and even fewer understood Latin, the supply of books, at first a trickle, later a torrent, would power social change and advancement. Groundwork for the Scientific Revolution.

 

Gutenberg and the four astronomical savants all feature in Jimbo’s Assumption.

                Concurrently, in the Low Countries, an ambitious Englishman, William Caxton, was becoming established in prosperous Bruges. A successful businessman, selling English cloth and purchasing continental luxury goods for consumption in London and beyond, his career expanded from commerce to encompass diplomatic duties. These obligations involved travel, including visits to Cologne where he encountered the press and burgeoning printing industry. Caxton saw the potential of this technology, so swiftly established a printworks in Bruges. The first printed English book was produced here. Not just an entrepreneur, Caxton had learnt to print and could translate European works into English. Also, a technician and a scholar.

                Westminster, in London, was the site of England’s first printing press, created by Caxton in 1476 CE on his return home. An early product was Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in the previous century. Many more followed, printing ventures multiplied, books became accessible to the populace, reading skills grew, so knowledge was shared, no longer confined to the rich and influential. Essential to the democracy we often take for granted.

                Most of Caxton’s printing output was in English, probably more than one hundred works. Many of these were translations, some completed by Caxton personally. While trying to remain faithful to the author’s meaning, he met conundrums because of the non-standard style of the original dialect, but also of English. He could do little about the former, but for the latter he began regularising syntax and inflection around the London dialect. His successors maintained this momentum, shaping the roots of modern English, now a global language. Caxton’s influence was profound. As Chaucer understood, mighty oaks from little acorns grow.

 

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