Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers - by Tamara Plakins Thornton (Paperback)

About the Book

"Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), a mathematician, astronomer, and insurance executive--and a major agent of Enlightenment-era change ... took his personal work habits and blended them with the certainty and predictability of the science that he studied, creating something completely new for his time: the impersonal bureaucracy. Enthralled with the precision and certainty of numbers and the unerring regularity of the physical universe, Bowditch shaped some of New England's most powerful institutions, from financial corporations to Harvard College, into clockwork mechanisms. He ran his insurance company with rule-bound regularity, implementing systematic and novel paperwork procedures, methodical bookkeeping practices, and standardized filing systems, helping to usher in a new era of intellectual history"--

Book Synopsis

In this engagingly written biography, Tamara Plakins Thornton delves into the life and work of Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), a man Thomas Jefferson once called a "meteor in the hemisphere." Bowditch was a mathematician, astronomer, navigator, seafarer, and business executive whose Enlightenment-inspired perspectives shaped nineteenth-century capitalism while transforming American life more broadly. Enthralled with the precision and certainty of numbers and the unerring regularity of the physical universe, Bowditch operated and represented some of New England's most powerful institutions--from financial corporations to Harvard College--as clockwork mechanisms. By examining Bowditch's pathbreaking approaches to institutions, as well as the political and social controversies they provoked, Thornton's biography sheds new light on the rise of capitalism, American science, and social elites in the early republic.

Fleshing out the multiple careers of Nathaniel Bowditch, this book is at once a lively biography, a window into the birth of bureaucracy, and a portrait of patrician life, giving us a broader, more-nuanced understanding of how powerful capitalists operated during this era and how the emerging quantitative sciences shaped the modern experience.

Review Quotes

A superb biography . . . vivid, sometimes witty, prose . . . a deft, deeply informed account. Thornton's 'thoroughly researched, gracefully written study locates him [Bowditch] in the several historical contexts to which he belonged: New England society and culture, business management, and science . . . a major contribution to our understanding of the early republic"--Richard D. Brown, New England Quarterly

An enormously learned book about an intellectually challenging subject . . . [bringing] Bowditch to life in order to show us something about the power of numbers to regulate the world--a power that we now know so well we forget it was not always so."--John Lauritz Larson, Reviews in American History

A remarkable book . . . a real pleasure to read. . . . Thornton writes beautifully and uncomplicatedly about subjects that are neither beautiful nor uncomplicated. She breathes life and excitement into ledger books, forms, and actuarial tables and paints vivid portraits of corporate board meetings. . . . A great achievement."--Gautham Rao, American Historical Review

Lucid and intelligent . . . and an often charming account of a remarkably gifted mathematician/bureaucrat"--Isis

Much more than a well-researched and engaging biography"--Thornton "shows how Bowditch's insistence on arithmetic order . . . a new spirit of numbers . . . contributed to a sea change in American life."--Theodore M. Porter, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

The story of Nathaniel Bowditch is fascinating. Tamara Plakins Thornton tells it with intelligence, warmth, and abundant sympathy."--American Scientist

This recommended biography rediscovers an eccentric who was key in improving several emerging industries. Readers of early American history will find a rich story that moves between New England high society and the founding of the natural sciences."--Library Journal

Thornton describes in an enjoyable way the lifestyle and society of Salem, at that time a wealthy port town, second only to Boston in New England."--International Journal of Maritime History

A well-researched and convincingly argued biography."-Journal for the History of Astronomy

Thornton's biography of Bowditch is remarkably fluid and her rich narrative profiles the social, economic and cultural issues that surrounded this extremely complicated man. . . . Give[s] the reader a probing, thoughtful, descriptive work about an unorthodox, quasi-genius Yankee.--The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord