Invisible hands : self-organization and the eighteenth century

394 Pages·2015·2.384 MB·English

by  Sheehan, Jonathan, Wahrman, Dror

Invisible Hands

Invisible Hands
Self- Organization and
the Eighteenth Century
Jonathan Sheehan & Dror Wahrman
The University of Chicago Press Chicago & London
jonathan sheehan is professor of history at the University of
California, Berkeley. Dror Wahrman is the Ruth N. Halls Professor
of History at Indiana University–Bloomington, as well as the
Vigevani Chair in European Studies and dean of humanities
at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2015 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2015.
Printed in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 75205- 1 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 23374- 1 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226233741.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sheehan, Jonathan, 1969– author.
Invisible hands : self-organization and the eighteenth century /
Jonathan Sheehan & Dror Wahrman.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-226-75205-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-226-23374-1 (e-book)
1. Philosophy, Modern—18th century. 2. Order—Religious
aspects. 3. Social sciences—Philosophy. 4. Enlightenment.
I. Wahrman, Dror, author. II. Title.
B802.S47 2015
117—dc23
2014044792
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
♾
This book is dedicated to Shani, Maya,
Alice, and Jacob, self-o rganizers all.

C o n t e n t s
Preface ix
Part 1
Prologue Europeans at the Threshold 3
1 Providence and the Orders of the World 11
2 Living with Complexity circa 1700 47
3 Man- Made Apocalypse: The Public Emergence of Self- Organization 93
Part 2
Prologue An Island of Dreams 137
4 The Order and Organization of Life 143
5 The Emergence of Mind 183
Part 3
Prologue An Island of Goats 225
6 The Secret Concatenation of Society 233
7 The Politics of Self- Organization 271
Epilogue 297
Acknowledgments 309
Notes 313
Index 363

P r e f a c e
It is unusual to know who introduced a common word into the English lan-
guage. It is even more unusual to have a record of its creation as a deliberate
act at a particular moment. On January 28, 1754, Horace Walpole, cultural con-
noisseur and correspondent extraordinaire, announced in a letter to a friend
his invention of “Serendipity, a very expressive word,” in order to denote un-
intended consequences and accidental discoveries. Walpole’s neologism de-
rived from his idiosyncratic reading of “a silly fairy tale, called the three Princes
of Serendip.” It may well have also owed something to Voltaire’s Zadig; or, The
Book of Fate (the title of the English edition that Walpole read upon its publica-
tion in 1749), which also drew on an episode based on the Serendip princes to
illustrate the play of chance and providence in human life.1
Walpole’s invention was far from serendipitous, however. The renowned
sociologist Robert K. Merton asked a long time ago why it was Walpole, in
the middle of the eighteenth century, to whom it fell “to fill a minute space
in the English language by creating this strange new word.” Merton and his
collaborator Elinor Barber suggested two answers: the contemporary interest
in the Orient, and “Walpole’s idiosyncratic propensities” and eccentric inter-
ests.2 Invisible Hands proposes a third answer. Viewed in the broad sweep
of the period, we suggest, the significance of the space filled by “serendip-
ity” was anything but minute. It was, rather, a telling clue to a sea change in
the eighteenth- century West, a revolution in notions of chance and order, ac-
cidents and causality, agency and aggregation. This revolution generated a
host of innovations in domains ranging from religion and philosophy through
science and economy to law and politics, innovations that became signature