This is the strange parallel history of Gutenberg’s invention. It has long been associated with the scientific revolution, for several reasons. Pamphlets and treatises from alleged heretics like Galileo could circulate ideas outside the censorious limits of the Church, ultimately undermining its authority; at the same time, the system of citation and reference that evolved in the decades after Gutenberg’s Bible became an essential tool in applying the scientific method. But Gutenberg’s creation advanced the march of science in another, less familiar way: it expanded possibilities of lens
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