By the turn of the eighteenth century it was all in place: the power of mathematics and the habits of observation most closely associated with the scientific revolution had created new ways for late-seventeenth-century Englishmen and -women to think about the future. The near-simultaneous crisis for England’s hard currency and the emergence of forms of credit subject to calculation and mathematical analysis created new forms of money. In the nascent stock market both such credit novelties and the newly constructed private enterprises could be priced and traded—thus cementing the connection
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