The qualitative universe versus the market: Tensions in seventeenth-century English economic thought.
Item
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Title
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The qualitative universe versus the market: Tensions in seventeenth-century English economic thought.
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Identifier
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AAI9732916
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identifier
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9732916
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Creator
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Finkelstein, Andrea L.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Stuart E. Prall
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, European | Economics, History
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Abstract
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This study re-examines the works of nine major seventeenth-century English economic writers (Gerard de Malynes, Edward Misselden, Thomas Mun, William Petty, Josiah Child, John Locke, Nicholas Barbon, Dudley North, and Charles Davenant) in order to demonstrate that key inconsistences in their treatment of money were, to a greater extent than has previously been considered, the result of their attempts to construct a market theory grounded in objective value rather than subjective price. While the quantity of money was presumed to affect commodity prices, the reciprocal axiom that money's value (its purchasing power) was simply the inverse of the price level was never accepted. Wherever possible, demand was relegated to a minor role precisely because it was understood to be dependent upon a buyer's subjective estimation rather than upon some quality "intrinsic" to the object for sale.;The roots of this anti-market treatment of the market-place lie in the finite nature of the seventeenth-century cosmos, in the Great Chain of Being connecting its concentric spheres and the Aristotelian harmony balancing them, and in the assumption that the body politic was but the body natural writ large. Thus the economic ideas of these writers cannot be entirely explained by reference to a material framework whether that be the class to which the writers belonged, the existence of trade crises or the fact that their currency was minted of metals with market-values independent of their stamped denominations.;Furthermore, developments in the century's intellectual context--the rise of millenarian social thought, the emergence of the Mechanical Philosophy and contending experimental and deductive approaches to science, the evolution of Natural Law, and the continuing influence of both Christian and Civic Humanism--exerted a powerful but paradoxical effect on the development of economic thought during the century. While economics as we know it may be the end product of that development, it is not the product intended by its pioneers; they believed these intellectual currents supported their original assumptions of intrinsic value.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
