William Deringer is Leo Marx Career Development Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
[Statistics] are center stage again now for reasons of both
political conflict and epistemological uncertainty. Once again,
some politicians wield numbers without any great concern about
their accuracy or meaningfulness; the victory in debate is all that
matters. Once again, given the profound changes in the structure of
the economy, we can’t be sure what categories and methods will give
us the understanding we would like. This is a terrific book for
reflecting on contested and uncertain statistical terrain.
*Enlightened Economist*
[Deringer] focuses on the early 18th century, with its increasingly
vitriolic debates over government expenditure, taxation, and debt
as well as the trade balance… Deringer tells these vivid stories
with a richness of research that brings to life not only the events
surrounding them but also the many famous characters involved. We
can learn from the 18th century debate, he says, by promoting new
and diverse computational approaches to stimulate public debate and
offset what he fears is growing anti-quantitative sentiment.
*Finance & Development*
A thoroughly impressive work…[Deringer] recontextualizes the
skepticism about numbers and suspicion of ‘experts’ in our time as
something that has existed from the beginning rather than a recent
disillusionment… A book this insightful about the past and with
such a trenchant analysis of the present is a rare pleasure
indeed.
*Journal of British Studies*
Tells the coming-of-age story of (early) modern public fascination
with numbers…A great book that should be on the shelves of everyone
who takes history of economic thought seriously.
*History of European Ideas*
Highly original in its research, highly intelligent in its
analysis, and highly sophisticated in its argumentation, there is
much to impress in this book. Calculated Values resonates with our
own financial obsessions.
*Theodore Porter, University of California, Los Angeles*
Engaging, learned, and beautifully written, Calculated Values is a
major scholarly work. Deringer builds on his own experiences as a
financial calculator to imbue material that otherwise might be a
tad dry with a sense of wonder and adventure, not to mention an
adroit sentiment of happy-go-lucky deceitfulness. It is a must-read
for a wide variety of scholars and interested general readers—truly
impressive and timely in the extreme.
*Sophus A. Reinert, Harvard Business School*
Deringer’s inspired and insightful book shows how mathematics and
accounting mixed with politics to create modern finance. The story
is so important, and yet, until now, has not been told. There is no
way to understand the birth of economics without reading it.
*Jacob Soll, University of Southern California*
Shows how numerical calculation has both worked and failed in
political life and what we can learn from it to help us use numbers
more effectively in the future…A tour de force of intellectual and
social history to explain how numerical thinking became the way to
understand the world. Original in its approach and sophisticated in
its argument.
*VoegelinView*
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