Jessica MarieOtis: By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion, and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024; pp. xi +255.
Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: Jessica MarieOtis's By the Numbers offers a welcome examination of numeracy as a cornerstone of early modern English literacy and popular culture, a field which has long deserved such focused attention.Otis charts a long transition in early modern English popular culture from number as practice or performance to an understanding of numeracy as the accompaniment of literacy.In tracing this shift, Otis opens a discussion of numeracy as an engine of popular culture and commerce, focusing in particular on its applications in the fields of early modern gaming, insurance, and demographic data analysis.She offers a welcome discussion of the material cultures of numeracy, in particular the uses of counters, Exchequer tally sticks, and other devices, alongside her examination of the relational aspects of numeracy as the public instrument of received forms of calculation and authorisation.In focusing on the changing objects and practices through which number was instrumentalised, Otis draws a broader parallel with number's changing role as political instrument in early modern England, from sign or symbol of divine providence to tool of political arithmetic.In Chapters One and Two, Otis follows a cultural shift in English numeracy over the early modern period, visible in the change from the use of Roman numerals and author-centered systems such as counters and tally sticks to the adoption of Arabic numerals and written arithmetic.In Chapter One, Otis introduces the practices of numeracy in early modern England, focusing on the cultures of computation and recording.Counting on fingers; reckoning with beans, spoons, twigs, and pocket objects; chalk on slates: these and other systems highlight numeracy as performative, embodied understanding.Otis is fascinating in her discussion of tally sticks, and the ways in which these instruments could at once mark a particular exchange, enact a relationship, and bear symbolic political weight, as seen in Oliver Cromwell's insistence that Exchequer tally sticks be rendered in English rather than Latin.In Chapter Two, Otis surveys the forms through which number was authorised by its participants.In a discussion of recording systems, Otis discusses the perceived vulnerability of written computations to tampering by bad actors, while counters and counting boards were understood as more reliable forms of computation.These object-based systems also lent a performative aspect to the practice of computation and recording, an example of numeracy as social or relational instrument.In Chapter Three, Otis opens a discussion of the changes in mathematical literacy and understanding from the sixteenth through the late seventeenth century.Otis convincingly argues that the adoption of Arabic numbers fundamentally transformed daily English engagements with number, moving away from a system in which number could be performed or recorded (e.g. through counters or tally-sticks), and in which participants in numeracy could be "simultaneously numerate and illiterate" (p.64).By contrast, the use of Arabic numerals presumed the ability to write as a prerequisite (p.65).Otis grounds her argument in a survey of English mathematical literature, in which her survey of readers' marks and annotations is particularly interesting as an indicator of textual reception.Otis also maps the sites of mathematical education, and notably of the importance of the "petty" school, a precursor to grammar school in which children (both boys and girls) were taught to read, write, and count.Chapter Four centres on the intersections of numeracy and time-keeping.Otis discusses the complexities of the early modern English calendar and its uses as political framework and instrument, as 94
Source: Journal of Religious History
Author: Kathryn James
Institution: Yale University
Language: English
Subfield: Theoretical Computer Science
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4402988489