At this point, The Great Transformation  by Karl Polanyi, 
on “the political and economic origins of our time,” assumes 
complete relevance in the mosaic of The Gutenberg Galaxy . 
Polanyi is concerned with the stages by which the Newtonian 
mechanics invaded and transformed society in the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries, only to encounter a reverse dynamic 
from within. His analysis of how prior to the eighteenth century 
“the economic system was absorbed in the social system” is 
exactly parallel to the situation of literature and the arts up till 
that time. This was true till the time of Dryden, Pope, and Swift, 
who lived to detect the great transformation. Polanyi enables 
us (p. 68) to face the familiar Gutenberg principle of practical 
advance and utility by separation of forms and functions:

     As a rule, the economic system was absorbed in the 
     social system, and whatever principle of behavior