{"product_id":"authority-liberty-and-automatic-machinery-in-early-modern-europe","title":"Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe","description":"\u003cp\u003ePerhaps never in history has society been so fascinated with a single machine as when, in early modern Europe, the clock evolved into a major cultural image, widely used in literature, science, and especially Cartesian philosophy. Yet in England, there was greater interest in a different class of technology-the feedback device, such as the safety valve on a steam engine, that could control itself internally;self-regulating systems were hallmarks not only of practical technology but also of the abstract theories of Newton and Adam Smith.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOtto Mayr, the director of Germany's leading technological museum, explores the relationship between machinery, technological thought, and culture. Contrasting England and the Continent, particularly in the eighteenth century, he uncovers a stikring pattern of technological metaphors applied to political systems-and lays the foundations of a new intellectual history of technology\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Johns Hopkins University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Product","offer_id":54253048791384,"sku":"9780801839399","price":34.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780801839399__6774cfd7ca707.jpg?v=1741134927","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/authority-liberty-and-automatic-machinery-in-early-modern-europe","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}