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Tamara Plakins Thornton

Auteur de Handwriting in America: A Cultural History

3 oeuvres 138 utilisateurs 2 critiques

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Œuvres de Tamara Plakins Thornton

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Nom canonique
Thornton, Tamara Plakins
Date de naissance
1957
Sexe
female

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Most people who are familiar with the name Nathaniel Bowditch nowadays know him for his navigational textbook, which is still carried aboard ships today. Yet this was just one artifact of a long and distinguished life which helped shape the world in which we live today. One of the many achievements of Tamara Plakins Thornton's superb biography of Bowditch is to illuminate the manifold aspects of this legacy in a way that helps readers to appreciate fully the true breadth of his accomplishments and what they reveal about a changing America.

One of the things that made Bowditch's attainments so remarkable was the humbleness of his beginnings. The son of an impoverished sailor, Bowditch was apprenticed to a ship's chandler at an early age. While learning the various aspects of maritime commerce, he taught himself advanced mathematics, and it was while on a series of voyages that he corrected the errors in the standard British navigational texts that led to the publication of his [b:The American Practical Navigator|685088|The American Practical Navigator - Bowditch|Nathaniel Bowditch|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1177175140s/685088.jpg|671471]. As Plakins points out, this made him a celebrity not just for the importance of his work, but that it was one of the first examples of Americans asserting an intellectual equality with their recently-defeated mother country, becoming a point of pride for many citizens of the young country.

After developing a modest fortune during five voyages as a "supercargo" (business agent) and ship's captain, Bowditch shifted his focus to finance, becoming president of the Essex Fire and Marine Insurance Company. Here is mathematical skills not only established his preeminence as an insurance actuary, but they also led him over time to promote a new model of business. Here Plakins makes a subtle argument for Bowditch as a link between the 18th century Enlightenment and the modern world of the late 19th and 20th centuries, as his preference for order and systems led him to establish forms and procedures that regularized previously haphazard business practices. As his stature grew, so did his opportunity to spread his approach, eventually leading him to reform Harvard University's administration and to employ trusts as a means of preserving the fortunes of the Boston "Brahmins" from the erosion experienced by their predecessors. His wealth was such that he was able to fund the publication of his translation and commentary of Pierre Simon-Laplace's [b:Celestial Mechanics|597611|Celestial Mechanics|Pierre-Simon Laplace|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|584256], which cemented his reputation as perhaps the foremost American intellect of his generation.

Finishing Thornton's biography may leave readers wondering why Bowditch is not better remembered today for his role in shaping our country. Her book goes far towards rectifying this, not just with a perceptive analysis that covers the range of his many activities but with a text that is a pleasure to read. Anyone with an interest in the history of the early republic, or simply those who enjoy a great and well-written work, should read this book. It is a fitting testament to a great and under-appreciated American.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
MacDad | 1 autre critique | Mar 27, 2020 |
In Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life, Tamara Plakins Thornton argues, Bowditch’s “purely scientific publications lacked originality and enduring significance. But when he brought his mathematician’s sensibility to America’s business, academic, and cultural institutions, he transformed the world of practical affairs” (pg. 1). In this way, “he put forward a vision of the corporation as a clockwork mechanism. If we want to understand the origins of that touchstone of modern life, that cornerstone of modern capitalism – the impersonal bureaucracy – then we must look to Bowditch. He will point us to the role of quantitative science in transforming American life” (pg. 1). Through her examination of Bowditch, Thornton complicates the historiography of modern capitalism and further demonstrates the social role of science in American history.
Thornton describes Bowditch’s mathematical education as part of a trade, writing, “Much more obvious models for a boy with unusual mathematical ability were those individuals belonging to the now extinct category of mathematical practitioners. These men, who were not college educated, functioned as jacks of all mathematical trades” (pg. 25). Examining Bowditch’s New American Practical Navigator, Thornton writes, “Ostensibly the Navigator made it possible for any man with enough ambition and three dollars in his pocket to track the open ocean. The book’s key innovation in this respect was its easy-to-use method of taking and working a lunar observation, the advanced technique for determining longitude” without a chronometer (pg. 57). Of Bowditch’s mathematical work, Thornton argues, “Numbers meant not just abstraction but also certainty, and here too Bowditch experienced a kind of aesthetic appreciation, even a spiritual quest that emanated from the core of his personality. Eventually that quest shaped his design of impersonal intuitions, but in the realm of pure computation it meant that Bowditch would find equal pleasure in generating accurate numbers and identifying erroneous ones” (pg. 77). Thornton continues, “Regularity, uniformity, method: allegiance to these values had guided Bowditch in his work on the Navigator and would enter into his work in business affairs most forcefully in the 1820s and 1830s” (pg. 94).
Despite this, “Bowditch himself understood that what recognition he had in Europe was not due to an original, or even truly significant, contribution to knowledge. That could only occur much later, once he completed the project he undertook in these years, the translation and annotation of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s magisterial Mécanique Céleste. Bowditch’s work on this chef d’oeuvre of the era’s greatest mathematical astronomer would be the major intellectual labor of his lifetime, and it abounded with possibilities and problems alike” (pg. 111). Of the role of science in society, Thornton writes, “Committed to the ideal of the Republic of Letters, Boditch took a jaundiced view of any attempt to corrupt the content of science with an ideological agenda. Though a confirmed patriot, he did not exclude nationalism from those corrupting influences” (pg. 125).
Following the War of 1812, businesses began to adopt methods from the sciences. Thornton writes, “Science and the world of learning had long offered models for systematizing practices” (pg. 170). She continues, in Boston, “Bowditch was introducing a new model of business operations: all matters should adhere to fixed rules, regardless of the persons involved. As we have seen, in practice there was often flexibility, but it is significant that the ideal of inflexibility found widespread support” (pg. 181). Of Bowditch’s work in Boston businesses and Harvard, Thornton writes, “Elite Bostonians needed Bowditch’s take-no-prisoners approach to putting affairs in order. Under his leadership the Life Office was making money for them and preserving their wealth for future generations, and Harvard was back on track, yielding its own sort of dividends to current and future generations of Brahmins” (pg. 216).
Further linking society and science, Thornton describes the response to Bowditch’s translation of Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste, writing, “High-quality printing…reflected America’s technological accomplishment and its level of taste. The reputations of nations were at stake” (pg. 220). Further, “In a few cases, Bowditch’s European correspondents went beyond formulaic, often patronizing sentiments and approached Bowditch as a fellow citizen of the Republic of Letters. The hallmark of that relationship was reciprocal exchange” (pg. 223). Thornton concludes that, while modern historians continue to use Bowditch’s translation of Mécanique Céleste, there remains much to study about his place in the history of capitalism.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
DarthDeverell | 1 autre critique | Oct 15, 2017 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
3
Membres
138
Popularité
#148,171
Évaluation
4.0
Critiques
2
ISBN
8

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