Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age Contributor(s): Deringer, William (Author) |
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ISBN: 0674971876 ISBN-13: 9780674971875 Publisher: Harvard University Press
Binding Type: Hardcover Published: February 2018 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | Europe - Great Britain - Stuart Era (1603-1714) - History | Europe - Great Britain - Georgian Era (1714-1837) - Business & Economics | Economic History |
Dewey: 941.06 |
LCCN: 2017034530 |
Physical Information: 1.4" H x 6.4" W x 9.3" L (2.02 lbs) 440 pages |
Themes: - Chronological Period - 17th Century - Chronological Period - 18th Century - Cultural Region - British Isles |
Features: Bibliography, Index, Price on Product |
Review Citations: Choice 08/01/2018 |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Modern political culture features a deep-seated faith in the power of numbers to find answers, settle disputes, and explain how the world works. Whether evaluating economic trends, measuring the success of institutions, or divining public opinion, we are told that numbers don't lie. But numbers have not always been so revered. Calculated Values traces how numbers first gained widespread public authority in one nation, Great Britain. Into the seventeenth century, numerical reasoning bore no special weight in political life. Complex calculations were often regarded with suspicion, seen as the narrow province of navigators, bookkeepers, and astrologers, not gentlemen. This changed in the decades following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Though Britons' new quantitative enthusiasm coincided with major advances in natural science, financial capitalism, and the power of the British state, it was no automatic consequence of those developments, William Deringer argues. Rather, it was a product of politics--ugly, antagonistic, partisan politics. From parliamentary debates to cheap pamphlets, disputes over taxes, trade, and national debt were increasingly conducted through calculations. Some of the era's most pivotal political moments, like the 1707 Union of England and Scotland and the 1720 South Sea Bubble, turned upon calculative conflicts. As Britons learned to fight by the numbers, they came to believe, as one calculator wrote in 1727, that "facts and figures are the most stubborn evidences." Yet the authority of numbers arose not from efforts to find objective truths that transcended politics, but from the turmoil of politics itself. |
Contributor Bio(s): Deringer, William: - William Deringer is Leo Marx Career Development Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
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