ABSTRACT
We have so far been concerned with the emergence during the seventeenth century of a particular discourse of economics with a specific vocabulary and a common topology. Slowly over time a kind of synthetical endeavour emerged which we in the last chapter, in analogy with John Cary’s terminology, called ‘a science of trade’. Thus it was in the discussions on economic topics preceding the ‘boom of the 1690s’ that the supply-anddemand approach of Mun and Misselden was further sharpened. It was also in these discussions that the view that the commercial economy must be perceived as a ‘natural’ system was carried further.
