write a synopsis of and offer your reflections on a particular person or thought. They are designed to further clarify various schools of thought, theories, and periods in the history of economic thought by highlighting important but perhaps not seminal thinkers and thought.
Write a synopsis of and offer your reflections on a particular person or thought. They are designed to further clarify various schools of thought, theories, and periods in the history of economic thought by highlighting important but perhaps not seminal thinkers and thought. In writing these short papers, you might want to consider the following: A short introduction to the thinker. This might include a brief summary of the context in which the author is writing, and-thus-what motivated his thinking. It might also include why the issues were thought to be important. Try to identify clearly the question-or questions-the work is trying to answer; what’s the aim, the author’s intent? What are the major historical and conceptual issues stressed? What are the major points the author is making? This could lead into the analysis (or model) the author provides. Explain how the author is/are trying to answer the question: what techniques, analytical tools, quantitative tools are used? What’s the theory underlying the article? What presuppositions seem to lie behind the work? What (if any) empirical work, what evidence, does the author provide? You might also wish to include any presuppositions that seem to lie behind the work, as well as policy implications following from the analysis. It may also be useful to highlight, to emphasize, the parts of the work that the author seems to think should receive special attention by its intended audience. It might also be useful to emphasize the major conclusions or points the author raises, and how it might extend, improve, or criticize its predecessors. I’d also like you to include your response to the work: what did you learn? Did the work reinforce (or challenge) something you already knew (were there any surprises-anything new here)? Did the author convince you? What thought did it trigger: where did it lead you? What would you like to know more about-or what (if anything) did the author not talk about that you thought might have been talked about? And how might the work be relevant to our course? Any links to other works we’re reading? 9/8/21, 4:59 PM HET: William Petty www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/petty.htm 1/11 Profile Major Works Resources Sir William Petty, 1623-1687. English Mercantilist, founder of "political arithmetic" William Petty, "the most rational man in England", as Samuel Pepys called him, or a "frivolous, grasping, unprincipled adventurer" as Karl Marx (1859) preferred, was born the son of a clothier in Romsey, Hampshire. Petty's early education was rather spotty until he ran away from home and took up as a job as a cabin boy on a merchant vessel at the age of 13. Petty broke his leg aboard ship the very next year and, as per the custom of the time, was marooned on the coast of Normandy. The injured boy was picked up by French Jesuit clerics who, impressed by his intelligence, admitted him to their college in Caen, paying for his upkeep themselves. The better part of Petty's education, particularly in mathematics, was acquired here. William Petty eventually returned to England where, after working for a short spell drafting sea charts, enlisted for a stint in the Royal Navy in 1640. In 1643, as the Civil War between King and Parliament raged, Petty joined the wave of English refugees in the Netherlands and thereafter France. This was probably the most Home Alphabetical Index Schools of Thought Essays & Surveys Contact Home > Profiles http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/schools/mercant.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/marx.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/home.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/alphabet.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/thought.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/essays.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/contact.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/home.htm http://ineteconomics.org/ http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/index.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/alphabet.htm 9/8/21, 4:59 PM HET: William Petty www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/petty.htm 2/11 enchanted time of Petty's life. He pursued a variety of endeavors, working for an optician in Amsterdam, studying anatomy at Leyden, and consorting with other exiled luminaries. Most notable was Petty's stay in Paris as private secretary to Thomas Hobbes, through whom Petty was introduced to the bubbling intellectual milieu of the French capital, most notably the circle of Abbé Mersenne. It in during this sojourn that Petty absorbed the tidings of the scientific method and empiricism, which he would soon himself carry into economics. In 1646, Petty returned to England to put his late father's affairs in order. After a failed attempt at selling his invention of a double-writing instrument, Petty gravitated to Oxford and continued his studies in medicine. His resuscitation of the corpse of a young woman hanged for murder made him a bit of a local celebrity. By 1650, Petty had become doctor of medicine, professor of anatomy, fellow and vice-chancellor of Brasenose College, Oxford. To this portfolio, he soon added (with the help of his haberdasher friend John Graunt) the chair in music at Gresham College in London (founded by Thomas Gresham back in 1597). It was at Gresham that Petty fell in with a discussion group of young new scientists, notably John Wilkins, Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren, John Wallis, Robert Hooke, et al. who jokingly called themselves the "Invisible College". In 1652, Petty took leave from Oxford and traveled as a physician-general in Cromwell's army in Ireland. The punitive Act of Settlement of 1652 confiscated the lands of all Irish combatants and shunted much of the remaining population to the province of Connaught, leaving most of Ireland open to English settlement. Cromwell intended to use Irish land to reward veterans of the parliamentary army in lieu of cash wages, but also to settle with parliamentary creditors and raise cash from sale to a wide variety of Anglo-Scottish colonist "adventurers". To this end, a comprehensive survey of the values of the confiscated estates was necessary. One was already underway headed by the surveyor-general Benjamin Worsley. But using the slow and painstaking means, Worsley's survey would likely take 13 years to complete. Petty, drawing on his practical experience with nautical charting, openly criticized Worsley's methods and proposed he could do it better and faster. Finally, in December 1654, after enough politicking, the young doctor was given the contract to survey the army lands himself. Using thousands of unemployed soldiers, rather than just a handful of skilled surveyors, and setting down the results by a central stable of cartographers assembled in Dublin, Petty finished the task of surveying half of Ireland - the notorious "Down Survey" - in a stunningly rapid 13 months. Petty's Down Survey was to continue serving as the legal reference for land disputes in Ireland well into the 19th C. Petty made a fortune for himself in the process. The poor clothier's son would end up with vast lands of his own across Ireland - according to Aubrey, some 50,000 acres, much of it around Kenmare, County Kerry, yielding an annual income of 7,000 to 8,000 pounds. This princely wealth he partly earned as a reward for his efforts in http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/hobbes.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/bacon.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/schools/oxford.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/graunt.htm http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/gresham.htm 9/8/21, 4:59 PM HET: William Petty www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/petty.htm 3/11 composing the survey. The remainder he acquired while subsequently serving on the commission to distribute the land parcels among the veterans. This perch opened great avenues to private enrichment for himself and his cronies. Petty sealed numerous personal deals with soldiers who preferred to be bought out rather than wait to take possession of their land (and who knew the true value of these parcels of land better than Petty himself?). Petty was subject to vicious accusations of corruption, fraud and malfeasance in the settlement of Irish army land. A good part was undoubtedly true. But much of it was also driven by the political rivalry between Henry Cromwell (the Lord Protector's son and Petty's close companion) and the ambitious Lord Deputy of Ireland, Charles Fleetwood (whose base was in the more radical republican camp in the army). Petty was thus a natural lightning rod of criticism by a military party suspicious of the aggrandizing pretensions of the Cromwellian clan. The accusations reached a crescendo in 1658, after the death of mighty Oliver Cromwell. The controversial ascendancy of his son Richard Cromwell reanimated the army's dormant republicanism. When Petty was on a mission in London, the army officers in Ireland forced the weakened Henry Cromwell to reluctantly open an inquiry into Petty's affairs. But Petty persuaded Cromwell to pack the commission with his friends, and the army officers were unable to push a conviction. In the meantime, Petty himself had successfully run for parliament for the seat of West Looe and moved back to England. But his entry into Parliament was met by a renewal of the accusations, this time proffered by an army preacher, Sir Jerome Sanchey, on the floor of the House of Commons. But before this was resolved, parliament was dissolved in the political chaos that was rapidly enveloping England. To clear his name, Petty felt compelled to put the details of this controversy before the public in print (1659, 1660). In 1660, the army revolt collapsed and the Commonwealth gave way to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy under Charles II. Both Henry Cromwell and Petty, who had long been at odds with the army, rendered critical services to the royalists in these heady days. The new king Charles II was grateful and allowed Cromwell to retire gracefully and gave Petty entry into his court. Petty rapidly won the confidence of the Stuart king, who bestowed a knighthood upon the clothier's son in 1661. Peerages were also offered, but Petty turned them down, seeing them as attempts to fob off his petitions to secure a real government post with policy influence - "sooner be a copper farthing of intrinsic value than a brass half-crown, how gaudily soever it be stamped or gilded", he muttered. Ideas - policy and otherwise - was something Petty was brimming with at this time. Splitting his time between Oxford and London, Petty resumed his participation in the "Invisible College" of Boyle, Wren, Wilkins et al. which by 1662, had the king's approval and a royal charter of incorporation as the "Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge". One of Petty's more interesting endeavors at 9/8/21, 4:59 PM HET: William Petty www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/petty.htm 4/11 this time was the invention of a double-bottomed vessel, a prototype of which he gave King Charles II (eventually lost at sea), and a model of which was given to the Royal Society. It was at this height that Petty published his first economic tract, the Treatise on Taxes and Contributions (1662) (initially published anonymously but