Customer Reviews

Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've long admired the Dutch Golden Age, but Harold Cook's work made many new connections for me, showing strong connections between developments in science, art, philosophy, commerce, and politics. It is unfortunate that so many of the key works of the era are still available only in Dutch or Latin, and Cook's work opened this English-speaking reader's eyes to many significant authors. Much appreciated.

This book was 20 years in development. Therefore, it includes a detailed description about the Dutch Golden Age. Good chapters are above all the fifth and the sixth. So far so good. However, this book has a huge blind spot. The part dedicated to explain the reasons of the "Scientific Revolution" is trivial. Cook describes only single focal points at regional and global level, but not at societal structural level. There is not evidence that merchant values and increasing of social complexity can be integrated as this book does. The arguments linking scientific revolution and commerce are unprecise. Moreover, they lack of systematic theorizing. A sentence of the preface's book summarizes my views on the book:

"And I hope that even those who disagree with the arguments of the book will find some of the descriptive material on which it is based to be of interest". Preface. p.xii.