Arts of calculation : quantifying thought in early modern Europe / edited by David Glimp and Michelle R. Warren.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Glimp, David.

Warren, Michelle R., 1967-

Series:

Early modern cultural studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematics--Social aspects--Europe--History.

Mathematics.

Numeration--Social aspects.

Numeration.

Social aspects.

Mathematics--Social aspects.

History.

Europe.

Physical Description:

xxix, 255 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Summary:

Though the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have long been recognized as watershed moments of scientific discovery in Western Europe, recent work in "historical epistemology" has underscored the complexity and unevenness of the transition from older to newer forms of knowing and acting upon the world. Building on these insights, the essays that make up Arts of Calculation extend our understanding of how people come to count -- how numbers create forms of agency, objects of inquiry, and kinds of cultural authority. This multidisciplinary collection traces a powerful convergence of numerical thought across disciplinary and national boundaries.

Contents:

1 Money and Administrative Calculation as Reflected in Scholastic Natural Philosophy / Joel Kaye 1

2 What Does an Escudo Buy? Gold and Money in Francisco de Quevedo's Sonnet "To Gold ..." / Alina Sokol 19

3 The Three-Dimensional Self: Geometry, Melancholy, Drama / Carla Mazzio 39

4 Clavius's Number and Its Early Modern Afterlife / Christopher Johnson 67

5 Fontenelle's Calculus: The Cultural Politics of Mathematics in Louis XIV's France / J.B. Shank 93

6 Hobbes and the Premodern Geometry of Modern Political Thought / Gordon Hull 115

7 Calculating Humans: Mathematics, War, and the Colonial Calculus / Timothy J. Reiss 137

8 Killing by Computation: Military Mathematics, the Elizabethan Social Body, and Marlowe's Tamburlaine / Patricia Cahill 165

9 Accounting for Generosity: Anton de Montoro's Poetic Invoicing / Benjamin Liu 187

10 Crooked Figures: Zero and Hindu-Arabic Notation in Shakespeare's Henry V / Eugene Ostashevsky 205

11 Binary as Transcultural Technology: Leibniz, Mathesis Universalis, and the Yijing / Robert Batchelor 229.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0312295316

OCLC:

53324933

Online:

Publisher description