On the Shoulders of Merchants

Exchange and the Mathematical Conception of Nature in Early Modern Europe

AvRichard W. Hadden

Häftad, Engelska, 1994

Del i serien SUNY series in Science, Technology, and Society

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Beskrivning

This book shows how the universal quantification of science resulted from the routinization of commercial practices that were familiar in scientist's daily lives. Following the work of Franz Borkenau and Jacob Klein in the 1930s, the book describes the rise of the mechanistic world-view as a reification of relations of exchange in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Critical of more orthodox, positivist Marxist accounts of the rise of science, it argues that commercial reckoners, in keeping with the social relations in which their activity took place, delivered a new mathematical object, "general magnitude," to the new mechanics. The book is an historical extension of the sociology of scientific knowledge and develops and refines themes found in the work of Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Gideon Freudenthal.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:1994-08-12
Mått:146 x 228 x 17 mm
Vikt:290 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:SUNY series in Science, Technology, and Society
Antal sidor:191
Förlag:State University of New York Press
ISBN:9780791420126

Utforska kategorier

Europas historia inom Historia och arkeologi

Mer om författaren

Richard W. Hadden is Associate Professor at Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia.

Recensioner i media

"Hadden's originality lies in the diligence with which he pursues, at the empirical level, the connection that Marxists generally draw between capitalism's distinctive forms of social relations, based on commodity exchange and money, and modern science's distinctive modes of thought, based on universal quantification and abstraction." — Steve Fuller, Executive Editor of Social Epistemology

Innehållsförteckning

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Accounts of the Rise of Early Modern Science IntroductionPost–World War II Accounts of the Rise of ScienceMarxism, Praxis and ScienceSocial Relations, Value and the Mechanistic Abstraction2. Marx, the Commodity Abstraction and Mechanistic Knowledge of Nature IntroductionMarx, Technique and Industrial ScienceSociety, Thought and Historical SpecificationCommodities, Value, Abstraction and HomogeneityCommodity Fetishism and the Representation of Society and NatureThe Concrete Existence of Abstract RelationsCommerce, Finance, Credit and the Money EconomyProduction, Labour and Labour-Time3. Mathematical Mechanics and Abstraction IntroductionAncient Mathematics—DiscontinuitiesThe Ontological Shift to Modern Mathematics—Jacob KleinMathematics and Mechanics—The Homogenization of Nature4. Exchange Relations, Commercial Arithmetic and the Foundations of Mathematical Mechanics IntroductionJohn PhiloponosThe Early European Arithmetic and Record-Keeping TraditionsThomas BradwardineNicole OresmeRobert RecordeJohn DeeThomas HarriotRafael Bombelli5. Exchange, Labour, Mathematics and Natural Philosophy: The Social Roots of a Science of Mechanics IntroductionNiccolo TartagliaGalileo GalileiFrancois VièteRené DescartesSimon StevinThe Hartlib Circle and the Royal SocietyConclusion: Social Relations and the Intellectual Appropriation of Nature Notes References Index