Revolution Of Seventeenth Century Research Articles

The underexamined role of money and how it undermines Nozick’s case for right libertarianism

In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick presented his doctrine of right libertarianism, largely a contemporary restatement of Locke’s moral imperative that an individual’s rights to his life, liberty, and property are absolute and place limits on state action. Parallelly, Nozick espoused the free-market system as a framework that not only respects individual rights but ensures material benefits. While the free market results in radical inequalities in holdings and widespread dispossession, Nozick treats the process as morally just and any state redistribution through taxation as wrong. However, neither Nozick nor his many critics fully considered the role of money in capitalist free markets, an omission I begin to address.
 
 Nozick asserts that money emerges pre-politically through the uncoerced actions of individuals, and that it derives its value from the commodity that underpins it. This conception of money underpins Nozick’s claims that a minimal state can be just and that the free-market system is a moral, efficient, and neutral allocator of resources. However, Nozick’s approach omits addressing how money’s general acceptability and stability are achieved. Answers can be found in heterodox economic paradigms, which put the state at the center of money creation, rendering money (and the state) incompatible with natural rights. Furthermore, by insisting on money’s commodity nature, Nozick ignores the seventeenth century revolution in money, necessitated by the emergence of free-market capitalism and commodity money’s inability to underpin it. In other words, it is not commodity money but credit money that should be the proper object of Nozick’s analysis. I go on to analyze what credit money is, how it arose, and why some form of it is necessary in a free-market context. Ultimately, I argue that it is not compatible with natural rights and is itself redistributive.
 Key words: money, distributive justice, Nozick, Locke, free market capitalism, natural rights

From city air to urban space: passion and pollution

The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has identified ‘making the air conditions explicit’ as an urgent task because the air is a cogent metaphor for the world in its interdependent, dynamic complexity, and failing health. The air is a natural phenomenon understood within a cultural framework. ‘City air’ has a specific cultural history that conjoins moral philosophy and empirical science. It can be understood both as a metaphor and as a physical entity, representing a way of being in the world as well as governing the quality of our existence. It has been replaced by ‘urban space’.The historical conditions of air in the aftermath of the seventeenth-century revolution in science are identified here as a key moment in the transition from city air to urban space. The ‘air conditions’ implicit in city air represent the shared passions of a common entity understood in holistic and vitalist terms. They are quite different in character to the idea of free and unfettered space as a neutral container of air, whether wholesome or life threatening. The underlying question is, in what terms should we consider civic virtue: is it dependent on controlling the passions (avoiding social disease), or dependent on controlling pollution (avoiding waste management failure)? The question returns us to the problem of how we represent the air in civically minded architecture.

Get ready for technoscience: the constant burden of evaluation and domination

Javier EcheverriaFondo de Cultura Economica de EspanaMadrid, 2003, 282 pp.At the outset of the book, Echeverria characterizes the “technoscientific revolution” asthe unfolding in the twentieth century of two others revolutions that are constitutive ofmodernity: the scientific revolution of seventeenth century, and the second industrialrevolution of the mid-nineteenth century. According to him, however, unlike the sci-entific revolution, the technoscientific revolution, is neither an epistemological nor amethodological revolution, but what he calls a “

Four Histories for the Forthcoming Fourth Centenary of the King James Version, 1611-2011

FOUR HISTORIES FOR THE FORTHCOMING FOURTH CENTENARY OF THE KING JAMES VERSION, 1611-2011 The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. By David Daniell. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2003. Pp. xx, 900. $40.00.) In Beginning: The Story of King James Bible and How It Changed Nation, Language, and Culture. By Alister McGrath. (New York: Random House. 2001 [hardbound]; Anchor Books. 2002. Pp. x, 338. $15.00 paperback.) Wide as Waters: The Story of English Bible and Revolution It Inspired. By Benson Bobrick. (New York: Simon & Schuster. 2001 [hardbound]; Penguin. 2002. Pp. 379,7. $14.00 paperback.) God's Secretaries: The Making of King James Bible. By Adam Nicholson. (New York: HarperCollins. 2003); Power and Glory: Jacobean England and Making of King James Bible (London: HarperCollins. 2003. Pp. xiv, 281. $24.95.) Perhaps because four-hundredth anniversary of King James Version (KJV) is approaching in 2011, there have recently been publications on English Bible by David Daniell, Alister McGrath, Benson Bobrick, and Adam Nicholson. Starting with best, I will make brief comments on their merits and then return to fuller examination of Daniell's Bible in English. David Daniell, emeritus professor of English, University College, London, was an eminent Shakespeare scholar before turning full-time to Bible. In last fifteen years, Daniell has edited modern-spelling versions of Tyndale's New Testament of 1534 (hardbound, 1989; paperback, 1995) and Tyndale's Old Testament (1992), and he has authored William Tyndale: A Biography (1994, hardbound; 2001, paperback). These publications, his own wide reading, and consultation with many other scholars enrich his survey of English Bible over thirteen centuries, from Caedmon's Hymn c.658 to New International Readers' Version of 1997. Alister McGrath, lecturer in Christian Doctrine and Ethics, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and Reformation scholar, is perhaps better qualified than Daniell to publish on Bible. McGrath studies two centuries, from first printed Bible of Johan Gutenberg in 1456 to restoration of Charles II in 1660. Although McGrath omits notes, he names his sources within text. He offers balanced judgments, describing NT Greek as of workplace and market and KJV English as reminiscent of the palaces of Westminster and high tables of Oxford and (p. 239). McGrath rightly praises Tyndale as a master of pithy phrase (p. 79). I would use this paperback in graduate study of Early Modern English literature or history. Benson Bobrick earned Ph.D. degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and so he was taught how to write literary history. Bobrick covers three centuries from Wycliff (d. 1384), to Tyndale, Coverdale, James I, and Bunyan (d. 1688). Unlike McGrath, he gives notes, but they are often out of date, e.g., H. W. Hoare, Tbe Evolution of English Bible (1901) (pp. 149, 288); or secondhand, e.g., Thomas More quoted by Christopher Hill, The English Bible and Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993) (p. 280). Even worse, Bobrick makes allegations without documentation; e.g., that Elizabeth tampered with juries in political trials (p. 270) or that Jesuit attempted to assassinate one of KJV translators (p. 228). A publisher and travel writer, Adam Nicholson treats brief period from accession of James I in 1603 to publication of KJV in 1611. Like McGrath, Nicholson incorporates his sources into text, but he is more chatty than analytical; e.g., he surrounds five pages on work of Second Cambridge Company of translators with seven pages on private life of their secretary John Bois (pp. 202-213). Nicholson appreciates Tyndale's plain and dignified language but holds that rich and resonate style of KJV was better suited to public reading in an established church (p. …

The endless kingdom: Milton's scriptural society

David Gay, The Endless Kingdom: Milton 's Scriptural Society. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2002. $47.50, £34.00.In The Endless Kingdom: Milton 's Scriptural Society, David Gay examines the importance of the Bible in Milton's late poems, especially the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament and its parallels in the 'sayings' and Gospels of the New Testament. This is not a study of Milton's hermeneutics or biblical sources, however; rather, developing insights from James Williams's studies of Proverbs and Northrop Frye's readings of Blake and the typological structure of biblical symbolism, Gay focuses on the condition of the Bible as a 'cultural, political, and textual entity' in Milton's works. Unlike Christopher Hill, who argued in The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993) that the Bible was of limited use for truly radical reform because it was 'a huge bran tub from which anything might be drawn' by radicals and conservatives alike, Gay argues that the Bible's discontinuous, aphoristic textuality and the contrasting, dialectical perspectives that it evokes - qualities found most clearly in Wisdom literature - encourage the prophetic vision and critical perspective necessary to imagine a truly liberated society. Like Hill, however, Gay considers the political significance of the Bible mainly as a site of strenuous opposition, and this has several consequences. The broad agreement among early modern Protestants on the continuity of the Bible and on 'things necessary for salvation' is underplayed, even though this agreement underwrites the debate about 'things indifferent' and Christian liberty that characterizes the dynamic society imagined in Areopagitica. If seventeenth-century readers like Milton turned to the Bible for political wisdom and vision, it was because they were already committed to it as God's book, and this complicates the Bible's textual condition enormously.Milton first explores his view of the Bible as a model for political renewal in Areopagitica, where readers are active in piecing together fragments of truth in the process of forming the scriptural society; in fact, as Gay makes clear, 'the Bible is the real subject of Areopagitica. It is also the subject of the three major poems as Milton develops the typological analogy between the central, sacred text and the society it could project and reform' (p. 101). In the late poems Milton revises his view so that poetry, like the Bible, becomes the inward possession of each reader, creating a critical perspective and 'paradise within' detached from the cycles of revolution that dominate human history, and liberating the subjects of scriptural society in the textual space of reading. In the late poems, Milton 'did not merely insist on his own version of political truth', but recreated the biblical condition of tension and opposition of which his views formed a part (pp. 1 1, 31). While it isn't clear how Milton transcends the contrasting perspectives and binary opposites of his biblical culture, especially if we compare the political use of the Bible to form Royalist textual communities during their period of exile, The Endless Kingdom offers a profound explication of the tensions arising from Milton's understanding of the Bible and biblical poetry as the material conditions of a spiritual of readers gathered together during the dark times of the Restoration.Gay begins by carefully explaining how the aphoristic texts of Proverbs were used by Restoration apologists like John Spencer, George Morley, and Matthew Griffin to argue that political wisdom inheres in the king alone through God's authority, thus conflating earthly and heavenly kings. Milton, on the other hand, in the Christian Doctrine, The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes locates the source of wisdom in the double scripture, the individual conscience, and spiritual perception, the cornerstones of 'an endless kingdom conceived and sustained in the elementary community formed in the textual and critical space of reading' (p. …

The science behind Europe's music scale

Europe's first music scale was set out by Pythagoras some two and a half thousand years ago. It conformed to the algebraic theorem that two conditions can be satisfied with two variables, for its two sizes of tone were chosen to produce perfect octaves and perfect fifths. Pythagoras also discovered the simple definition of these concordant intervals as the ratios of the lengths of the vibrating strings which produce them, the ratios being 2/1, 3/2, and 4/3 for octave, fifth, and fourth respectively, the last two combining, as he showed, to make an octave. These discoveries quantified the physics of music much as Newton's laws did the physics of motion. Some two thousand years on, musicians began to exploit key changes and other intervals whose concordances had become appreciated, both kinds of exploitation requiring alteration of Pythagoras's tone sizes. Some partial success was obtained by employing the skill which had developed in the logarithmic handling of intervals to produce a tuning system called ‘meantone’, and musicians had to be content with it for about three centuries. It used two such markedly different sizes of semitone that the wrong size in a sequence destroyed a concordance. In consequence, only half the keys played satisfactorily, eventually provoking interest in equal semitones. However, the tuning of equal semitones could only be described in a qualitative way that was not accurate enough in practice. The seventeenth century revolution in science included an enormous advance in the physics of music initiated by Mersenne. He discovered the frequencies of vibration, that Pythagoras's simple ratios apply to frequencies, the physical laws of vibrating strings, that vibrating strings and pipes produce harmonics, and that ‘beats’ are heard when two frequencies are slightly out of unison. ‘Beats’ make possible the accurate mistuning the ear requires of equal semitones. Around AD1700 Werckmeister produced a satisfactory ‘equal temperament’ tuning which played all keys and chords, and soon J. S. Bach had appreciated it and famously demonstrated the new power it gave composers. Since Bach's role was much like that of later inventors who made successful applications of science in technological disciplines, it seems right to regard him as the first in a long line.

The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution. By Christopher Hill. Pp. xiii + 466. London: Penguin Books, 1994 (first publ. by Allen Lane, 1993). £8.99. 0 14 015990 8

The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution. By Christopher Hill. Pp. xiii + 466. London: Penguin Books, 1994 (first publ. by Allen Lane, 1993). £8.99. 0 14 015990 8

The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution.

INTRODUCTION: A Biblical Culture. THE REVOLUTIONARY BIBLE: Before 1640 Fast Sermons and Politics, 1640-1660 Metaphors and Programmes Wilderness, the Garden and the Hedge Poverty, Usury and Debt Political Divisions and the Civil War Liberty and Libertinism Bible and Radical Politics. INTERNATIONAL CATHOLICISM AND NATIONAL POLITICS: Decalogue and Idolatry Chosen Nation, Chosen People Covenanted Peoples: Scotland and England God is Leaving England Reign of the Saints Antichrist and his Armies The Man of Blood. THE BIBLE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE: Some Biblical Influences Milton, Bunyan and Marvell. THE END OF THE REVOLUTIONARY BIBLE: Bible and an Unequal Society Bible Dethroned Unfinished Business. Appendices: God and Highwayman A Note on Liberation Theology.

Book Review: II. Biblical Studies: The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution

Book Review: II. Biblical Studies: The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution

Book Review: The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution

Book Review: The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution

‘Freethinking’ and ‘Freedom of Thought’ in eighteenth-century Britain

ABSTRACTIn early modern Europe, religious heterodoxy and intellectual inquiry posed serious challenges to the authority of centralizing forces both secular and ecclesiastical. At the same time, however, these dangerous developments had been driven by those individuals whom eighteenth-century writers had adopted as ‘culture heroes’ for an age increasingly self-conscious of its own enlightened status. In Britain, the newly established order defended itself against the scepticism and moral determinism of ‘freethinkers’ by upholding a religious and moral order based on liberty. But ‘freethinkers’ such as Anthony Collins were themselves the inheritors of, and propagandists for, the seventeenth-century revolution in science which underpinned the ideology being wielded against them. Their challenge elicited from Edmund Law an argument which co-opted their epistemology to ground the familiar metaphysics of liberty associated with the Newtonian position of Samuel Clarke. Where ‘freethinking’ had been perceived as a dangerous solvent of the social order, ‘freedom of thought’, within limits that were themselves a leading subject of debate in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, could be upheld as consistent with the demands of political society.

The Evolution of the Property Tax: A Study of the Relation between Public Finance and Political Theory

The property tax has perplexed and frustrated economists for decades, and for most of this century it has been denounced as an unjustifiable relic of the Middle Ages, which has unaccountably survived into modern times. The property tax is in fact the oldest tax in any modern system of public finance, and because of its age it has been associated with both modern and premodern tax philosophies. This essay explores the political context of the property tax in its medieval and modern settings--i.e., before and after the seventeenth-century revolution in political philosophy that gave birth to liberalism and "political economy." That revolution altered our understanding of the purpose of the state, bringing corresponding changes to our understanding of public finance. The modern property tax is a legacy of that revolution. But the modern property tax is mostly a legal facade, concealing a very different tax behind it. The de facto property tax, made possible by decentralized administration and by informal and illegal assessment procedures, carries forward into modern times much of the tax in its premodern form. When Seligman and other economists denounced the property tax as "medieval," therefore, they were more right than they knew. It is argued here that many of the problems associated with contemporary property taxation are traceable to this confusion between the "legal" and the "real" property taxes, and that the public might be better served by a tax openly based on premodern principles.

Helmont, Glisson, and the doctrine of the common reservoir in the seventeenth-century revolution in physiology.

The change in the physiological conception of body fluid during the Seventeenth Century exemplifies the beginning of changes in chemical ideas away from humours as irreducible components of fluid systems towards water as the common solvent of an indefinitely large range of solutions. Against the Galenic humoral view of body fluids J.-B. van Helmont (1579–1644) postulated ‘latex’, a humour distributed through the body and common to several body fluids. The theory of latex explained experimental findings and provided a basis for Helmont's introduction of diuretics into the treatment of dropsy. Francis Glisson (1597–1677) adopted the theory of latex. In this paper it is shown that Helmont contradicted, in part at least, the distinctness of humours by a doctrine of a common reservoir from which various body fluids are drawn. It is further argued that, on the available evidence, Helmont is the originator of this idea of a common reservoir. Through hitherto unremarked and unpublished manuscript evidence, it is shown that Glisson, in adopting the theory of latex, and its therapeutic application, modifies and extends it. In the manuscripts Glisson expresses himself in the language of Helmontian philosophy. Given Glisson's known influence (in, for example, spreading Harvey's doctrine of the circulation), the question arises what part, if any, is attributable to him in the transmission of the doctrine of the common reservoir. From the point of view of experimental science, that doctrine makes a break with the past no less radical than does, say, that of the circulation. It appears that we have here yet another major contribution of Helmont to the scientific revolution with, through Glisson, a possible channel of transmission of this contribution.

Anglican Against Puritan: Ideological Origins during the Marian Exile

Traditionally, divisions among Protestant groups during the English Reformation have been examined as deep theological crises, simply written off as manifestations of economic or political struggles, or, more recently, treated as having roots in basic ideological commitments. One of the most important Protestant divisions, that between Anglicans and Puritans, has undoubtedly had a great impact on western history; however, it lacks full treatment from the point of view of its intellectual and social bases. One's attention is easily drawn to the Anglican-Puritan conflict of Queen Elizabeth's rule or to the seventeenth-century revolution in England; but earlier origins often receive only cursory treatment. Actually, the ideas, party divisions and social characteristics of the Anglican-Puritan division in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras have their roots and first appearance during the flight of Protestants from England after the reign of King Edward VI. It is to the ideological and social factors which appeared in the congregation of English exiles at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1554–55 that I should like to draw attention, for it was in the “Troubles at Frankfurt” that the historical pattern of the Anglican-Puritan division assumed a form which was to have such a great impact on western society.