[HN Gopher] Mr. Aecroid's Tables: Calculations and Customs in th...
___________________________________________________________________
Mr. Aecroid's Tables: Calculations and Customs in the Early Modern
Countryside
Author : pepys
Score : 8 points
Date : 2024-03-14 22:09 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.journals.uchicago.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.journals.uchicago.edu)
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > In the 1610s and 1620s, a new computational technology took
| hold in England: printed mathematical tables for compound
| interest and discounting ("present value") problems. [...]
|
| > Mathematical tables like Acroyd's emerged out of long-running
| conflicts between church landlords and tenants over how to
| determine just and reasonable fines on church lands. Discounting
| tables were thus not tools of instrumental rationality evincing a
| new capitalist mentality, but tools of social accommodation and
| products of the era's "economy of obligation."
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-17 23:02 UTC)