Abstract
The major breakthrough in methods of inquiry that eventuated in science as we know it today began in the thirteenth century and culminated in the work of Galileo, Huygens, Newton and others in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Parallel with this development of science, and closely related to it, was a relatively sudden spurt in the development, construction, and use of various kinds of machines. A machine can be defined as a dynamic physical device with a number of functionally interrelated parts. The major complex machine to be developed in this period, and the first to be widely distributed in the history of civilization, was the mechanical clock. The important role of the clock in the development of Western culture (Mumford, 1934, 1967) in general, and of modem science in particular (Laudan, 1966; Moran, 1977; Price, 1975, Chap. 2), has been noted by others, but the relation of the mechanical clock to the emergence of scientific psychology is a story that has not previously been told.
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McReynolds, P. (1980). The Clock Metaphor in the History of Psychology. In: Nickles, T. (eds) Scientific Discovery: Case Studies. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 60. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9015-9_6
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