Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scientific Thought

by Joel Kaye

Overview

Intellectual developments pioneered by scholastic natural philosophers of the fourteenth century constituted a critical stage in the emergence of scientific thought. Beneath these technical developments lay a profound reconceptualization of nature. The purpose of this book is to analyze the components of this reconceptualization, and to speculate on the influences that shaped it. It argues that the transformation of the conceptual model of the natural world c. 1260-1380 was strongly influenced by the rapid monetization of European society during the same period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521572767
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/12/1998
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series , #35
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.67(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The economic background: monetisation and monetary consciousness in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; 2. The Aristotelian model of money and economic exchange; 3. The earliest Latin commentaries on the Aristotelian model of economic exchange: Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas; 4. Models of economic equality and equalisation in the thirteenth century; 5. Evolving models of money and market exchange in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; 6. Linking the scholastic model of money as measure to proto-scientific innovations in fourteenth-century natural philosophy; 7. Linking scholastic models of monetised exchange to innovations in fourteenth-century mathematics and natural philosophy.

Editorial Reviews

Medievalists have neglected the history of ideas in our generation, but this study shows how it should be revived and practiced.
— American Historical Review

John W. Baldwin

"Medievalists have neglected the history of ideas in our generation, but this study shows how it should be revived and practiced." John W. Baldwin, American Historical Review

"...Wealth of accurate and pertinent detail...this book is an excellent case study of the unity of scholastic thought." Edith Dudley Sylla, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"The book thus illuminates the philosophical underpinnings for Nicole Oresme's forceful condemnation of monetary manipulations, and his subjection of monetary policy to the common good rather than the sovereign's expediency." Fracnçois Velde, Journal of Economic History

"Kaye has made a persuasive case-more carefully researched and extensively analyzed than any previous work along this line." William J. Courtenay, Speculum - A Journal of Medieval Studies

From the Publisher