Scholar's Award - The Matter of Calculation: Early Modern Calculating Machines, Statecraft and Thinking about Thinking

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The Matter of Calculation: Early Modern Calculating Machines, Statecraft and Thinking about Thinking Matthew L. Jones Columbia University In the seventeenth century mathematicians devised calculating machines capable of performing arithmetical operations long considered the exclusive province of rational beings. The new machines invented by Blaise Pascal and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz challenged the boundary between the merely animal and rational capacities of human beings. Existing histories of early modern calculating machines largely chart their technological development with little attention to philosophical and political context or uses. Pascal and Leibniz initially conceived and produced their machines as practical tools of calculation for governance and scientific work. This project will first describe the local bureaucratic, political, and technical contexts, largely in France and Germany, in which Pascal and Leibniz developed their machines; and then will explore the philosophical, technological, and political implications they and others found in their machines into the eighteenth century. The project will also examine the work of Samuel Morland, an English artisan who developed his own calculating machine in the eighteenth century. The project will rely heavily on analysis of archival sources in Germany, England and France. Intellectual merit: This project will go beyond existing technical histories of the calculating machines by providing an informed study of the political and bureaucratic contexts of their creation, their intended uses, and their philosophical and scientific implications. The project will make a significant contribution to the history of modern calculation, to the role of calculation in statecraft, and to a history of philosophy that pays close attention to the concrete, technical work done by philosophers. Broader impact: The project aims to produce a text for an audience of general well educated readers that (1) explores early modern concerns about the boundary between machine and human intelligence, (2) compares them with contemporary questions about artificial intelligence, and (3) underscores the interplay of intellectual innovation and artisanal skill in technological change.