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Visionary Calculations: Inventing the Mathematical Economy in Nineteenth-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2019

RACHEL KNECHT
RACHEL KNECHT*
Affiliation:
Rachel Knecht received her doctorate in history from Brown University in 2018. She is currently a senior admissions consultant for Spark Admissions in Chestnut Hill, MA. E-mail: rknecht4@gmail.com
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Abstract

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Type
Krooss Prize Dissertation Summaries
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 786 - 795
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

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References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Beckert, Sven, and Rockman, Seth, eds. Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouk, Dan. How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowditch, Nathaniel. The New American Practical Navigator. Salem, MA: Cushing & Appleton, 1802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Patricia Cline. A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Cook, Eli. The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Harold J. Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lepler, Jessica M. The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, Jonathan. Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, Donald. An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, Donald, Muniesa, Fabian, and Siu, Lucia, eds. Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Mihm, Stephen. A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Mary S. The History of Econometric Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noble, David F. America By Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. New York: Knopf, 1977.Google Scholar
Oleson, Alexandra, and Brown, Sanborn C.. The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Scientific and Learned Societies from Colonial Times to the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Oz, Frankel. States of Inquiry: Social Investigations and Print Culture in Nineteenth Century Britain and the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, William G. Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Schabas, Margaret. The Natural Origins of Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklansky, Jeffrey. The Soul’s Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Smith, Roswell C. Practical and Mental Arithmetic on a New Plan. Philadelphia: Marshall Clarke & Co., 1833.Google Scholar
Thornton, Tamara Plakins. Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breslau, Daniel. “Economics Invents the Economy: Mathematics, Statistics, and Models in the Work of Irving Fisher and Wesley Mitchell.” Theory and Society 32, no. 3 (2003): 379–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck, Peter. “People Who Counted: Political Arithmetic in the Eighteenth Century.” Isis 73, no. 1 (1982): 28–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. “Enlightenment Calculations.” Critical Inquiry 21, no. 1 (1994): 182–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jonsson, Fredrik Albritton. “Rival Ecologies of Global Commerce: Adam Smith and the Natural Historians.” American Historical Review 115, no. 5 (2010): 1342–1363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knecht, Rachel. “Visionary Calculations: Inventing the Mathematical Economy in Nineteenth Century America.” PhD diss., Brown University, 2018.Google Scholar
Lucier, Paul. “Commercial Interests and Scientific Disinterestedness: Consulting Geologists in Antebellum America.” Isis 86, no. 2 (1995): 245–267.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. “Fixing the Economy.” Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (1998): 82–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobodian, Quinn. “How to See the World Economy: Statistics, Maps, and Schumpeter’s Camera in the First Age of Globalization.” Journal of Global History, 10 (2015): 307–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spary, Emma. “Political, Natural and Bodily Economies.” In Cultures of Natural History, edited by Secord, James A., Jardine, Nick, Spary, Emma. C, 178–196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Stinchcombe, Arthur L. “Reason and Rationality.” Sociological Theory 4, no. 2 (1986): 151–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkinson, James D. “Useful Knowledge? Concepts, Values, and Access in American Education, 1776–1840.” History of Education Quarterly 30, no. 3 1990): 351–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yonay, Yuval P. The Struggle Over the Soul of Economics: Institutionalist and Neoclassical Economists in America Between the Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zakim, Michael. “Inventing Industrial Statistics.” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 11, mo. 1 (2010): 283–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.Google Scholar
Rauner Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.Google Scholar
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia PAGoogle Scholar
Beckert, Sven, and Rockman, Seth, eds. Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouk, Dan. How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowditch, Nathaniel. The New American Practical Navigator. Salem, MA: Cushing & Appleton, 1802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Patricia Cline. A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Cook, Eli. The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Harold J. Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lepler, Jessica M. The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, Jonathan. Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, Donald. An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, Donald, Muniesa, Fabian, and Siu, Lucia, eds. Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Mihm, Stephen. A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Mary S. The History of Econometric Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noble, David F. America By Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. New York: Knopf, 1977.Google Scholar
Oleson, Alexandra, and Brown, Sanborn C.. The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Scientific and Learned Societies from Colonial Times to the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Oz, Frankel. States of Inquiry: Social Investigations and Print Culture in Nineteenth Century Britain and the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, William G. Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Schabas, Margaret. The Natural Origins of Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklansky, Jeffrey. The Soul’s Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Smith, Roswell C. Practical and Mental Arithmetic on a New Plan. Philadelphia: Marshall Clarke & Co., 1833.Google Scholar
Thornton, Tamara Plakins. Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breslau, Daniel. “Economics Invents the Economy: Mathematics, Statistics, and Models in the Work of Irving Fisher and Wesley Mitchell.” Theory and Society 32, no. 3 (2003): 379–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck, Peter. “People Who Counted: Political Arithmetic in the Eighteenth Century.” Isis 73, no. 1 (1982): 28–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. “Enlightenment Calculations.” Critical Inquiry 21, no. 1 (1994): 182–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jonsson, Fredrik Albritton. “Rival Ecologies of Global Commerce: Adam Smith and the Natural Historians.” American Historical Review 115, no. 5 (2010): 1342–1363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knecht, Rachel. “Visionary Calculations: Inventing the Mathematical Economy in Nineteenth Century America.” PhD diss., Brown University, 2018.Google Scholar
Lucier, Paul. “Commercial Interests and Scientific Disinterestedness: Consulting Geologists in Antebellum America.” Isis 86, no. 2 (1995): 245–267.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. “Fixing the Economy.” Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (1998): 82–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobodian, Quinn. “How to See the World Economy: Statistics, Maps, and Schumpeter’s Camera in the First Age of Globalization.” Journal of Global History, 10 (2015): 307–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spary, Emma. “Political, Natural and Bodily Economies.” In Cultures of Natural History, edited by Secord, James A., Jardine, Nick, Spary, Emma. C, 178–196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Stinchcombe, Arthur L. “Reason and Rationality.” Sociological Theory 4, no. 2 (1986): 151–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkinson, James D. “Useful Knowledge? Concepts, Values, and Access in American Education, 1776–1840.” History of Education Quarterly 30, no. 3 1990): 351–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yonay, Yuval P. The Struggle Over the Soul of Economics: Institutionalist and Neoclassical Economists in America Between the Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zakim, Michael. “Inventing Industrial Statistics.” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 11, mo. 1 (2010): 283–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.Google Scholar
Rauner Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.Google Scholar
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia PAGoogle Scholar