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The ways in which machinery could mimic nature or mediate human perception of the natural world contributed in large measure to the atmosphere of wonder that surrounded technological advancement in early modern Europe. In her analysis of Renaissance machinery, Wolfe identifies optical equipment, speaking tubes, and printing presses (devices featured in Don Quixote s Barcelona adventures) as instruments that mediate or alter our experience of the natural world (4). According to Yates, esoteric traditions that arose from classical and medieval antecedents (like the Hermetic-Cabalist tradition founded by Pico della Mirándola) persisted through the early modern period, where they informed early modern epistemology and attitudes about the acquisition and maintenance of knowledge. Both early modern science and contemporary systems of magic (such as alchemy, for example) aspired to exercise human control over the natural environment with methods verifiable through experimentation.2 Cultural attitudes about technology were as important as the inventions themselves, and engineers exploited the magical associations with technology to create a sense of wonder around their devices
