[2] For Crosby, this was made possible by a shift in mindset and worldview that the author collectively calls mentalité ( Bourdieu's habitus comes to mind) toward quantitative and visual thinking fostering a superior understanding of science and technology.

"For James D. Parr[5] Crosby [...] describes with interesting narrative and ample references European triumphs in military maneuvering, cartography, calendar accuracy, time-keeping devices, currency and bookkeeping, polyphonic music, rules of grammar and alphabetization, astronomy, and geometric perspective in painting.The book is divided into three sections, where the first introduces a new view of time and space as a continuum that could be subdivided and segmented, assisted by the application of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system.

"[8] However, Wilson (like Swetz[2]) felt that Crosby did not really systematically argue his premise, but rather devoted most of the work to exploring examples of quantitative and visual developments without explaining their centrality to a putative new European world-view.

[8] While criticizing Crosby’s hasty connection between quanta and imperialism, historian of science Steven Shapin notes:[9] Nevertheless, there is something profoundly right about a book that draws historians' attention to the importance of measurement and standardization in coordinating complex activities and in extending power over long distances.In a 2001 literature review of then-recent macrohistory works, in The American Historical Review historian Gale Stokes examines The Measure of Reality along with thematically similar works, including Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) by Jared Diamond, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (1998) by David Landes, ReOrient (1998) by Andre Gunder Frank, and The Great Divergence (2000) by Kenneth Pomeranz, among others.

Stokes classified Crosby in the first camp, and pointed out that anthropologist Jack Goody, in East in the West (1996) has held that quantification technologies were not uniquely European, but developments from China through India to the Mediterranean since the Bronze Age.