ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the continuing “anthropologizing” of European thought through the increasing emphasis on numbers in European life. It shows that the use of numbers in science and other aspects of European thought, such as risk analysis and insurance, meant that European culture kept having to rethink its view of both the divine and the divine’s relationship to humanity. Among other thinkers considered are Robert Boyle (1627–1691), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), and Isaac Newton (1643–1727).
