1620. Erasmus directed the new print technology to the 
traditional uses of grammatica  and rhetoric and to tidying up 
the sacred page. Bacon used the new technology for an 
attempt to tidy up the text of Nature. In the different spirit of 
these works one can gauge the efficacy of print in preparing 
the mind for applied knowledge. But such change is not as 
rapid or as thorough as many suppose. Again and again 
Samuel Eliot Morison in his Admiral of the Ocean Sea  is baffled 
by the inability of Columbus’ sailors to fend for themselves in 
the circumstances of the New World: “Columbus embraced him, 
as well he might; for there was not a crust left to eat aboard 
the grounded caravels, and the Spaniards were starving. I 
cannot understand why they were unable to catch fish . . .’  (p. 
643) After all, the point of Robinson Crusoe  is the very novelty 
of man as adaptable and resourceful, able to translate one kind 
of experience into new patterns. Defoe’s work is the epic of