See Simon Schaffer, "Ceremonies of Measurement: Rethinking the World History of Science," Annales HSS, 70, no. 2 (April-June 2015): 335-360. [PDF].

Schaffer: "No doubt all this explains why some historians have identified the advent of European modernity with the rise of the quantitative spirit, and, simultaneously, with the capacity of these Europeans to travel, loot, accumulate, and dominate beyond the limits of their own world and, in principle, everywhere."