ABSTRACT
Current studies of the period of early modernity turn about a compelling methodological fantasy. In the period of early modernity, we believe, cultural works broadly understood are folded into the baggy purse of tradable, transportable, and translatable products and objects we now call commodities; from that purse emerge what Chandra Mukerji called “new and elaborate systems of thought,” of imagination, and of perception. 1 Here is Mukerji, writing in 1983 about “the economic life of early modern Europe”:
To the extent that objects and trade permeated vast areas of European social life, they also invaded people’s imaginations and perceptions, influencing their writings and pictorial designs. Increasingly, the books of the period were filled with mechanistic imagery, used particularly to describe nature but also political and economic processes. Paintings too showed some iconographic signs of the new economic system … [T]he expansion of trade and increased appearance of objects on the market were the occasion for the establishment of new and elaborate systems of thought, ones that advocated careful measurement and study of relationships among variables, conceived of as material forces. This way of thinking … enhanced rational calculation. 2
