William Petty

The first comprehensive intellectual biography of William Petty (1623-1687), using both printed and manuscript sources. Petty was a key figure in the English colonization of Ireland, the institutionalization of experimental science, and early social science. McCormick examines Petty's intellectual development and his invention of 'political arithmetic' against the backdrop of the scientific revolution and the political upheavals of the Interregnum and Restoration. He argues that political arithmetic was less a form of analysis than a program of social engineering designed to instil industry and loyalty in the English and Irish populations, and traces its transformation after Petty's death into an apparently apolitical form of statistical reasoning.