On the Shoulders of Merchants

Richard W. Hadden is Associate Professor at Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia.

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Accounts of the Rise of Early Modern Science IntroductionPost–World War II Accounts of the Rise of ScienceMarxism, Praxis and ScienceSocial Relations, Value and the Mechanistic Abstraction2. Marx, the Commodity Abstraction and Mechanistic Knowledge of Nature IntroductionMarx, Technique and Industrial ScienceSociety, Thought and Historical SpecificationCommodities, Value, Abstraction and HomogeneityCommodity Fetishism and the Representation of Society and NatureThe Concrete Existence of Abstract RelationsCommerce, Finance, Credit and the Money EconomyProduction, Labour and Labour-Time3. Mathematical Mechanics and Abstraction IntroductionAncient Mathematics—DiscontinuitiesThe Ontological Shift to Modern Mathematics—Jacob KleinMathematics and Mechanics—The Homogenization of Nature4. Exchange Relations, Commercial Arithmetic and the Foundations of Mathematical Mechanics IntroductionJohn PhiloponosThe Early European Arithmetic and Record-Keeping TraditionsThomas BradwardineNicole OresmeRobert RecordeJohn DeeThomas HarriotRafael Bombelli5. Exchange, Labour, Mathematics and Natural Philosophy: The Social Roots of a Science of Mechanics IntroductionNiccolo TartagliaGalileo GalileiFrancois VièteRené DescartesSimon StevinThe Hartlib Circle and the Royal SocietyConclusion: Social Relations and the Intellectual Appropriation of Nature Notes References Index

"Hadden's originality lies in the diligence with which he pursues, at the empirical level, the connection that Marxists generally draw between capitalism's distinctive forms of social relations, based on commodity exchange and money, and modern science's distinctive modes of thought, based on universal quantification and abstraction." — Steve Fuller, Executive Editor of Social Epistemology