British Empiricism and Early Political Economy Gregory King's 1696 Estimates of National Wealth and Population

Subjects:

• History » European History -- Early Modern/Renaissance
• Political Science » Comparative Politics

Reviews:

• Taylor sets out to defend King, whose work he admires and whose methods he believes were remarkably effective considering the limitations and unreliability of the data on which he could draw. While studies of a statistical pioneer do not usually suggest a lively text, readers may find Taylor's short study surprisingly stimulating and enthralling. This is partly due to the enthusiasm Taylor brings to the topic and his very genuine admiration for Gregory King. Although far from uncritical, and well aware of the limitations of King's results, he cogently argues that King was hampered not so much by his methodology as by the data he had to work with.
  —H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online June 2006
• Taylor leads his readers on a journey around, rather than through, King's Estimates. Engaging and well informed, he introduces us to King's circle of coversation and to forerunners and contemporaries among the illuminati if empiricism (English and continental)....Although Taylor cannot tell us on what most of the Estimates was based (King left few notes), and though King's successors would use modern mathematics, Taylor persuades this reader that the Estimates was calculated by the best means at hand and without political motivation. Taylor leaves the reader well informed about the contingent and circumstantial influences on the Estimates. He appends King's short autobiography, the 1696 Estimates themselves, Robert Chalmers's brief biography of King, and finally, a bood bibliography. Altogether, this book deserves our praise and a wide readership. Math-phobic historians should know the text is fully reader friendly. Taylor makes it fun to learn all this.
  —The Historian 2006
• [A] fascinating and discursive discussion of the birth of political arithmetic and Gregory King's working methods ... Taylor's approach makes for absorbing reading and his synthesis demonstrates the vital role of 'shop arithmetic' and observation in King's workign practices.
  —Local Population Studies Spring 2006
• Engraver, herald, surveyor, and Secretary to the Commissioners for the Public Accounts, King (1648-1712) is best known for his 1696 estimate of England's wealth and population, and his early articulation of what is now the ubiquitous law of supply and demand, though known by some as King's Law. Taylor (history, Southern Illinois U.-Edwardsville) interprets both accomplishments in light of the history and statistical sciences.
  —Reference & Research Book News August 2005

Table of Contents:

• Chapters
• Preliminary Remarks
• Mathematical Probability and Demographic Prediction
• Gregory King: Man of Projects
• British Empiricism and Shop Arithmetic
• Higher Mathematics and 17th-Century Political Economy
• Shop Arithmetic, Conversation, and Projects
• Queen Anne's Bounty
• Gregory King's Methods of Calculation
• What Was Political Arithmetic, Really?
• George Chalmers and the Stagnation of Political Arithmetic
• Wobbles and Perturbations
• Acknowledgments and Afterthoughts
• Reprinted Documents by or about Gregory King
• King's Autobiography
• King on the Naval Trade of England
• King's Natural and Political Observations, 1696
• King's Letter about Queen Anne's Bounty
• The Life of Gregory King by George Chalmers