PETTY, William.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Discourse made before the Royal Society the 26. of November 1674. First edition of this plea by the great statistician and economist to apply science to human affairs, as part of a broader paper applying mathematics to various industries and uses. It includes the first appearance in print of the term "political arithmetic". The work was a "substantial, and highly idiosyncratic, intellectual contribution... ostensibly a work of mixed mathematics describing the operation of square relationships in everyday life, the Discourse also presented Petty's own hypotheses about the fundamental nature of matter... More strikingly still, the Discourse explicitly linked both mixed mathematics (as proof of natural philosophy's practical utility) and Petty's own version of corpuscularian matter theory to political arithmetic" (McCormick, p. 217).The recto of the imprimatur leaf is inscribed "E LIBRIS Mauritii Wheeler ex Æde Christi 1675". Wheeler served as chaplain of Christ Church, Oxford, and rector of St Ebbe's, and in 1673 tutored the future Archbishop of Canterbury William Wake. He was subsequently master of the College School at Gloucester Cathedral from 1684 to 1712, establishing its library, and was appointed cathedral librarian in 1709. He has inscribed the title page, "phronein eis to sophronein", from Romans 12:3 - "to think so as to have a sound mind". Wheeler and Petty and were certainly in the same intellectual circles: in the 1684 Philosophical Transactions, Wheeler's pape

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