The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century ed. by Tore Frängsmyr, J. L. Heilbron, and Robin E. Rider

Abstract

354 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE coincidence that papermaking would one day flourish in Pescia and Lucca, as both of them are within easy reach of Leghorn. The difficulties encountered by the Colle paper industry long attracted the attention of government authorities. The author has devoted a large portion of his book to an exhaustive (and at times perhaps overly detailed) discussion of government policies. Deter­ mined to salvage and hopefully to stimulate a stagnant industry, the grand dukes of Tuscany resorted to a variety of protectionist mea­ sures culminating in 1649 in the creation of a state “monopoly” whereby the chief Florentine financial institution (the Monte di Pieta) was granted sole rights to buy linen rags and to market paper in Tuscany, while the actual manufacturing process remained in the hands of private papermakers who received orders from and deliv­ ered the finished products to the Monte di Pietd agents. The paper state monopoly lasted about a century, and, while it succeeded in salvaging the Colle industry by ensuring to it the limited domestic market, it conspicuously failed to improve productivity levels and to make the industry competitive. This is an important, painstakingly researched book. It will be of interest to students of the history of technology as well as of economic history in general. In addition, thanks to its broad comparative perspective, it brings together a wealth of scattered information on Italian papermaking and in doing so helps fill a major gap in the industrial landscape of early modern Italy. Domenico Sella Dr. Sella is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He has written extensively on the economic history of Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. His publications include Industry and Trade in Seventeenth-Century Venice (1961) and Crisis and Continuity: The Economy of Spanish Lombardy in the Seventeenth Century (1979). He is currently researching the growth of rural industries in north Italy in the early modern period. The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century. Edited by Tore Frangsmyr, J. L. Heilbron, and Robin E. Rider. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. Pp. viii + 411; illus­ trations, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00. The quantifying spirit—“the passion to order and systematize as well as to measure and calculate”—took hold of European thought during the latter decades of the 18th century. Mathematical methods were applied to numerous problems in such fields as political econ­ omy, artificial language, forest management, and technology. The turning point came around 1760 and thus coincided with Toynbee’s industrial revolution and R. R. Palmer’s democratic revolutions. Causes range from the needs of bureaucratic states to industrial innovation to new political philosophy. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 355 This book is the result of a collaborative research project of historians of science at the University of California at Berkeley and Uppsala University. Each of the thirteen intelligent and elegant essays addresses one area of knowledge that experienced systematization and/or quantification. Several focus on activities in Sweden, activities often ignored or overshadowed in other contexts. Together the essays form a coherent whole that is greater than the sum of the parts, to an extent rarely found in volumes of this sort. In addition, the book provides an excellent critical bibliography of current literature. Part I concerns the rationalization of knowledge. Tore Frangsmyr sets the stage for the rest of the book by his attention to Christian Wolff, the most influential philosopher in the Leibniz tradition. Working in the early part of the century, Wolff applied mathematics to the general exercise of reason but did not use it instrumentally. Gunnar Broberg argues that the rapid explosion of information that occurred during the second half of the 18th century created a crisis for natural historians seeking a classification scheme that would embrace the totality of creation and represent the coherence, and order, they believed to exist in the natural world. Enyclopedists faced the same problem. John Lesch discusses the rise of systematics in botany, mineralogy, chemistry, medicine, and analytic geometry. Robin Rider notes that mathematics offered both information and example to those who sought to reform language, to make it a more rational tool of enlightenment. Part...