William Petty
And the Ambitions of Political Arithmetic
ISBN13: 9780199547890ISBN10: 0199547890
Hardback,
352 pages
Jan 2010,
In Stock
Price:
$99.00 (06)
Winner of the John Ben Snow Foundation Prize of the North American Conference on British Studies
Description
William Petty (1623-1687) was a key figure in the English colonization of Ireland, the institutionalization of experimental natural philosophy, and the creation of social science.Examining Petty's intellectual development and his invention of "political arithmetic" against the backdrop of the European scientific revolution and the political upheavals of Interregnum and Restoration England and Ireland, this book provides the first comprehensive intellectual biography of Petty based on a thorough examination not only of printed sources but also of Petty's extensive archive and pattern of manuscript circulation. It is also the first fully contextualized study of what political arithmetic--widely seen as an ancestor of modern social and economic analysis--was originally intended to do.
Ted McCormick traces Petty's education among French Jesuits and Dutch Cartesians, his early work with the "Hartlib Circle" of Baconian natural philosophers, inventors, and reformers in England, his involvement in the Cromwellian conquest and settlement of Ireland, and his engagement with both science and the politics of religion in the Restoration. He argues that Petty's crowning achievement, political arithmetic, was less a new way of analyzing economy or society than a new "instrument of government" that applied elements of the new science--a mechanical worldview, a corpuscularian theory of matter, and a Baconian stress on empirical method and the transformative purposes of natural philosophy--to the creation of industrious and loyal populations. Finally, he examines the transformation Petty's program of social engineering, after his death, into an apparently apolitical form of statistical reasoning.
Features
- The first comprehensive intellectual biography of William Petty based upon detailed research not only of printed sources but also his extensive unpublished archive
- The first fully contextualized study of what Petty's crowning achievement, political arithmetic, was originally intended to do
- Argues that political arithmetic was not only a new way of analysing economy or society but a new 'instrument of government' for the creation of industrious and loyal populations
- Examines the transformation of Petty's program of social engineering, after his death, into an apparently apolitical form of statistical reasoning
Reviews
"Well written, often displaying an enviable turn of phrase and an eye for telling quotations from original sources, while McCormick also has a real gift for expounding complex topics in a lucid way." --American Historical Review
About the Author(s)
Ted McCormick is Assistant Professor of History at Concordia University, Montreal, having received his PhD from Columbia University.
