Court Mechanics: Clockwork Metaphors in the Late Medieval Mechanical Turn

MECHANISM investigates how fourteenth-century Europeans used the newly invented mechanical clock as a metaphor to conceptualise and communicate ideas about the world and society. To many learned observers, its intricate mechanism mirrored the cosmos, the human person, or the political order. Yet, unlike later early-modern models of a self-regulating universe or a perfectly ordered state, medieval comparisons appeared to emphasise fragility, the need for regulation, and reliance on the horologist who kept unreliable devices running. The project examines how such images emerged, what they meant to their creators, and how they were mobilised in philosophical and rhetorical contexts. The metaphorical uses of clockwork in the 14th century remain underexplored. Research is fragmented across disciplines, often based on narrow corpora and shaped by teleological narratives that treat medieval metaphors as precursors of early modern thought. MECHANISM addresses this gap by compiling the first systematic inventory of clockwork analogies, analysing their intellectual and rhetorical functions across genres, and situating them in their social and political settings. Its approach combines intellectual history, the history of knowledge, and pragmatic sociology with historical network analysis. By placing these images within what I call the fourteenth-century “mechanical turn” – when mechanical devices became a major preoccupation of intellectual and cultural life – the project moves beyond linear histories of technological progress. It will test the idea that the rise of the clock as a model of cosmic and social order, together with the figure of its horologist, was part of a wider reconfiguration of knowledge and culture in which courts played a central role and artisanal expertise acquired new value. By showing how a past society interpreted new technology through its cultural and political concerns, MECHANISM adds historical depth to current debates on emerging technologies.