The huge economic, political and scientific transformations which took place in France as in various countries in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought about their share of new problems,

or at least the growing awareness that old questions were assuming a new and fundamental character that the new scientific spirit and the rise of knowledge could help solve. Some of these solutions were found in quantification, others in formalisation.

This evolution was the result, on the one hand, of the needs of expanding economic activities and changing governmental practices and, on the other hand, of the new attitude towards the world induced by the development of sciences. A phrase drawn from the Bible (Wisdom of Solomon, XI, 20) - where, speaking of justice, it is stated that God “arranged all things in right order by proportion: by measure, by number, and by weight” - and transposed into the new context became the scientific motto of the time and is to be found in the writings of the period. Two expressions of it are celebrated examples of this attitude: one is by William Petty (1623-1687) in his Political Arithmetick - “instead of using only comparative and superlative words, and intellectual arguments, I have taken the course... to express myself in terms of number, weight, or measure” ([1676] 1690, Preface) - and the other by Isaac Newton (1643-1727) in a notebook: “Numero pondere et men- sura Deus omnia condidit”, that is, “God created everything by number, weight and measure.” The need for quantification, and then attempts at formalisation, slowly extended to “moral sciences” in general and to political economy in particular. It was diversely felt, depending on both the authors and the topics under examination. This need remained for a long time only programmatic, but partial

1 “Between equal minds and all things being equal, he who has geometry prevails and acquires a whole new vigour from it.”

DOI: 10.4324/9780429202414-8 realisations were achieved. This chapter is an outline history of this evolution in the French context.^[114]

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Source: Faccarello G., Silvant C. (eds.). A History of Economic Thought in France: Political Economy in the Age of Enlightenment. Routledge,2023. — 291 p. 2023

The huge economic, political and scientific transformations which took place in France as in various countries in Europe during the seventeenth and eight­eenth centuries brought about their share of new problems,

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