This article “The Architects of the Mechanical World View” is a chapter from Rifkin’s book entitled Entropy (first published in 1980). In it he discusses three important figures who defined the “scientific revolution” at the end of the long drawn out period of the Middle Ages, also known as the “Enlightenment”. Bacon, Descrates, and Newton dominate the landscape, but Rifkin also touches on John Locke and Adam Smith who applied the scientific methods to economics. This is by no means a complete picture of the era, just the tail-end of a long build up since the discovery of the heavy plow and the “invention of invention.”