Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age

Abstract

Harold J. Cook has written an intellectual, socio-political and economic history of the early modern Dutch Republic during its Golden Age. It focuses on the life sciences and medicine, including a convincing array of topics from the histories mentioned above, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies and works on botany, nature, medicine, philosophy and anatomy. It does this in order to discuss the ‘scientific revolution’ or ‘rise of modern science’ in the context of the development of knowledge and the culture of an exchange and global economy in the Dutch Republic over the seventeenth century. Admitting that the multi- and inter-disciplinary approach that he employs is ambitious (p. xi), it is also, de facto, holistic. To develop this type of meta-narrative and approach he has chosen to write a descriptive analysis that is by necessity lengthy. The argumentation is clearly written and symmetrically presented. It represents years of reading, reflection and writing (including 20 books and articles authored by Cook in an extensive bibliography).