Search results for "William PETTY"

Money in the "Body Politick" : The Analysis of Trade and Circulation in the Writings of Seventeenth-Century Political Arithmeticians.

2005

International audience; This article discusses the analysis of trade and circulation in the writings of seventeenth-century political arithmeticians. Political arithmetic was in its way an anatomy of the social body. William Petty titled his 1672 book The Political Anatomy of Ireland. In his preface he explicitly claimed to be following Francis Bacon, highlighting the experimental method and the idea that analytical methods can be transposed from one discipline to another. He thus drew a parallel between the natural body and the body politic. It was a widely held idea that money guaranteed the nation's health; conversely its poor state of health could lead to the wasting away of the body po…