Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age by William Deringer (review)

In Calculated Values, William Deringer tells the story of how numbers gained in authority and became considered to be disinterested and reliable tools to know about society. The book traces the origins of the "Quantitative Age" to England and Britain after the Glorious Revolution. Although numbers had been regarded with suspicion in the seventeenth century, Deringer notes, they became widely used in Britain's political debate after 1688. Disagreeing with the scholarly claim that numbers were important instruments to find the truth or to control the resources of a state, Deringer maintains that quantitative data and the practice of calculating were tools of partisan conflict. It was not the state, but "outsiders" that assigned numbers political value. To criticize the government, republican Country critics started a transformation in Britain's "civic epistemology" that Deringer reconstructs from 1688 to the late eighteenth century.

Calculated Values won the Kenshur Prize for the best book in eighteenth century studies, recognizing its value for scholars from a range of disciplines. Deringer's science- and cultural-studies approach produces interesting evidence. From the perspective of intellectual historians like the reviewer, however, it is not without problems. Deringer defines calculation as a practice and an active and ongoing activity (xix), yet he traces it only in relation to particular controversies. Each of the seven chapters focuses on a specific moment of transition in what he calls Britain's "new calculating age," "quantitative culture," or "civic epistemology." As a consequence, large time spans are treated very cursorily, which raises the question of how representative the chosen case studies are. For the particular controversies that he does investigate, Deringer relies on a wide range of kinds of sources, including well-known publications, lesser-known pamphlets, and unknown archival manuscripts. Overall, the book is well-written and the argument well-explained, even as Deringer's inventive jargon is often confusing and unnecessary. He describes his protagonists as "calculators," "calculating personalities," and "numerical lives," yet repeatedly emphasizes that they did not function as experts (see, for example, 158).

Chapter 1 deals with "Parliament's numerical awakening" (49). The constitutional arrangements of the Glorious Revolution assigned Parliament new responsibilities in public finance. The collective body of the members of Parliament, however, had little knowledge about public accounting. Because the numeracy of Britain's population was growing and the printing press liberated, republican Country critics were able to introduce calculation as a tool of party-political dispute. Of particular importance was Charles Davenant, who transformed Petty's political arithmetic into a "calculative strategy" to overcome the absence of information about money and criticise the government (70).

Chapter 2 explores the "Equivalent," that is, the compensation paid by England to Scotland for accepting higher taxes after the Union of 1707. This payment is crucial, Deringer explains, because its calculation was thought to solve the political, social, and economic problems that the Union had created. Although the number itself was more powerful than the people who had calculated it, two of the six members of the group assigned with the task are treated in detail: William Paterson, who had a commercial background, and David Gregory, who had a background in academic mathematics. Although both were Scots who had made careers in England, Paterson and Gregory spoke "two different quantitative idioms" because of their different experiences (82).

In Chapter 3, Deringer investigates a discussion between Whigs and Tories about the balance of trade in the early 1710s. The two parties had two completely different "computational styles" (119). Tories considered numbers to be incisive instruments to undeceive the people. Since they were in power at the time, they had access to data and could produce more intricate calculations. In contrast, Whigs considered numerical data to be clear and accessible by common sense. This difference was not just rhetorical but reflected long-standing disagreements about civic epistemology. Despite their differences, Deringer writes, Whigs and Tories agreed implicitly about the value of calculation as a highly adaptable instrument in party...