Abstract
The transfer of metaphors does not only take place between well-defined sciences: it is also a commonplace of what another contributor to this volume has called “everyday” language.1 Within that realm, however, the problem of transfer and the meaning of metaphors take on different dimensions. This paper, in discussing nineteenth-century uses of epidemic language to describe commercial crises, demonstrates some of these differences. For one thing, the strong claim that metaphor transfer plays a generative role in discovery is more difficult to sustain when the participants in a debate are interested in implementing policy (for example) rather than in forming new theories. The commercial reformers described below used metaphors to enrich the meaning of their new forms of action, but the actions themselves derived at least as much from professional interests and perceptions as from the intellectual content of the borrowed language. Related to this claim is the idea that everyday language, to a greater degree than self-consciously “scientific” discourse, is embedded in a more general moral discourse. As a result, the meaning of the metaphors is not as stable as in the more formal language of science, the purveyors of which at least make an effort to shelter themselves from wider moral concerns. Although instability of meaning is also present in the more restricted domain of “science,” its significance becomes more apparent as one descends from more to less technical discourse. As a result, the meaning of the metaphors is not a stable as in the more formal language of science, the purveyors of which a least make an effort to shelter themselves from wider moral concerns.
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Notes
See Peter Weingart, “Struggle for Existence: Selection and Retention of a Metaphor” in this volume.
See Alborn, “Economic Man, Economic Machine: Images of Circulation in the Victorian Money Market,” forthcoming in P. Mirowski (ed.), Markets Red in Tooth and Claw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). All this holds equally for intellectual crises in, for example, a scientific discipline undergoing a paradigm shift.
Morning Chronicle, February 9, 1825, cited in Bishop Carleton Hunt, The Development of the Business Corporation in England 1800–1867 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936), p. 38
Leone Levi, The Gilbart Lectures on Banking (London, 1875), p. 94.
Robert Young, Darwin’s Metaphor: Nature’s Place in Victorian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Robert Young, Darwin’s Metaphor: Nature’s Place in Victorian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) Chap. 6. Young accomplishes this search for new meanings of old words in his analysis of Darwin’s intended connotation of “natural selection” and he misinterpretations of that phrase by people still imbued with a “natural theology” worldview.
Samuel Jones Loyd, Reflections ...on the Causes and Consequences of the Pressure on the Money Market (London, 1837), p. 44.
Mary S. Morgan, The History of Econometric Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 1–43 discusses the prehistory of business-cycle theory.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1776), pp. 342–343.
Loyd, Tracts and other Publications on Metallic and Paper Currency (London, 1858), p. 131.
Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: the Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 147–149. Hilton’s observations on the “natural” connotations of commercial crisis in Victorian England are illuminating, especially at pp. 117–125, but he does not go beyond a suggestion here and there about the functions of language in carrying this out: see pp. 131 and 161.
R. J. Morris, Cholera 1832: The Social Response to an Epidemic (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1976), pp. 129–158.
E. H. Ackerknecht, “Anti Contagionism between 1821–1867,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 22 (1948), 568–593
see also Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: the Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), Note 9, pp. 156–160.
See Christopher Hamlin, “Predisposing Causes and Public Health in Early Nineteenth-Century Medical Though,” Social History of Medicine 5 (1992), 43–70
John V. Pickstone, “Dearth, dirt and fever epidemics: rewriting the history of British ‘public health,’ 1780–1850,” in T. Ranger and P. Slack (eds.), Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 125–148.
Both authors follow Margaret Pelling’s original historiographical approach in Cholera, Fever and English Medicine 1825–1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).
“Plague, a Contagious Disease,” Quarterly Review 33 (1825), p. 219.
See also the sources cited in John Eyler, Victorian Social Medicine: The Ideas and Influence of William Farr (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 225n3.
Hilton, The Age of Atonement: the Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), Note 9, p. 156
Pickstone, “Dearth, dirt and fever epidemics: rewriting the history of British ‘public health,’ 1780–1850,” in T. Ranger and P. Slack (eds.), Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Note 12, pp. 128–135.
Michael Dury, “Medical Elites, the General Practitioner and Patient Power in Britain during the Cholera Epidemic of 1831–32” in I. Inkster and J. Morrell (eds.), Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture 1780–1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), p. 272
Anthony Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 123.
On the continuity of the classical tradition at this time see Pickstone, “Dearth, dirt and fever epidemics: rewriting the history of British ‘public health,’ 1780–1850,” in T. Ranger and P. Slack (eds.), Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Note 12, pp. 128–131.
Chadwick, An Essay on the Means of Insurance against the Casualties of Sickness, Decrepitude, and Mortality, London, 1836
reprinted in S. E. Finer, The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (London: Methuen, 1952), pp. 154–155.
Hamlin, “Predisposing Causes and Public Health in Early Nineteenth-Century Medical Though,” Social History of Medicine 5 (1992), Note 12, pp. 62–65.
Smith, Philosophy of Health (London, 1830), p. 364
Pickstone, “Dearth, dirt and fever epidemics: rewriting the history of British ‘public health,’ 1780–1850,” in T. Ranger and P. Slack (eds.), Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Note 12, pp. 144–146.
See Hilton, The Age of Atonement: the Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) Note 9, pp. 43, 85.
McCulloch, “Commercial Revulsions,” Edinburgh Review 44 (1826), 70.
Senior, Political Economy (London, 1850), p. 50.
Chalmers, The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns (Glasgow, 1821–1826), Vol. III, pp. 326, 127.
On Malthus’s defense of consumption see Geoffrey Gilbert, “Economic Growth and the Poor in Malthus’ Essay on Population,” History of Political Economy 12 (1980), 84–96.
See, e.g., D. P. O’Brien, J. R. McCulloch: A Study in Classical Economics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970).
Loyd, Reflections on the Causes and Consequences of the Pressure on the Money Market (London, 1858), Note 8, pp. 140–141.
See, e.g., Loyd, Thoughts on the Separation of the Departments of the Bank of England (1844) in Reflections on the Causes and Consequences of the Pressure on the Money Market, 1858, Note 8, pp. 280–281
Alborn, “Commercial Therapeutics and the Banking Profession in Early Victorian England,” Perspectives on the History of Economics 5 (1990), 105–116.
Report from the Select Committee on Joint Stock Companies [Parliamentary Papers, 1844. VII] vi; Perspectives on the History of Economics, 1843 evidence, q. 2354.
Report from the Select Committee on Joint Stock Companies [Parliamentary Papers, 1843 evidence, q. 2256
Cornelius Walford, Insurance Cyclopaedia (London, 1871–80), Vol. II, p. 6. For an example of the continuing impact of the parallel forms of company and demographic registration
see Peter Payne’s The Early Scottish Limited Companies 1856–1895 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1980) in which he discusses the “standard of commercial mortality” in Scotland (p. 30) and includes a table showing the “Average Length of Life of Dissolved Scottish Companies by selected industrial classification” (p. 101).
Cited in Walford, Insurance Cyclopaedia, 1871–80, Note 29, Vol. II, p. 13.
See John Eyler, “William Farr on the Cholera: The Sanitarian’s Disease Theory and the Statistician’s Method,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Science 28 (1973), 79–98.
Hilton, The Age of Atonement: the Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), Note 9, p. 250
Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), Note 16, p. 122.
Eyler, “William Farr on the Cholera: The Sanitarian’s Disease Theory and the Statistician’s Method,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Science 28, 1979, Note 14, pp. 114–122.
See also Charles Rosenberg’s discussion of Florence Nightingale’s views on hospital conditions in Explaining Epidemics and Other Studies in the History of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 90–108.
Pelling, op. cit., 1978, Note 12, pp. 204–229.
Christopher Hamlin, “Providence and Putrefaction: Victorian Sanitarians and the Natural Theology of Health and Disease,” Victorian Studies 28 (1985), 381–411.
Christopher Hamlin, A Science of Impurity: Water Analysis in Nineteenth Century Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), Chs. 5–7.
Economist 11 (1853), 1417
Economist 5 (1847), 412.
See also William C. Lubenow, The Politics of Government Growth: Early Victorian Attitudes Toward State Intervention, 1833–1848 (Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1971), pp. 94–95.
Economist 10 (1852), 796.
Economist 5 (1847), 517, 519
reprinted in Wilson, Capital, Currency and Banking (London, 1847).
See H. M. Boot, “James Wilson and the Commercial Crisis of 1847,” History of Political Economy 15 (1983), 567–583.
Matthew Begbie, Partnership “en Commandite,” or Partnership with Limited Liabilities (London, 1848), pp. 85–86 (italics in original)
Mercantile Law Commission, First Report [Parliamentary Papers, 1854. XXVII], pp. 152, 231.
See also Vere H. Hobart, Remarks on the Law of Partnership Liability (London, 1853), p. 20.
Mercantile Law Commission, First Report [Parliamentary Papers, 1854, Note 41, pp. 114, 178
Report from the Select Committee on the Law of Partnership [Parliamentary Papers, 1851. XVIII], q. 186.
In part this argument came in direct response to Loyd’s currency theory, which was under fire following its role in exacerbating the 1847 crisis: see Charles Holland’s evidence, loc. cit.
Hilton, The Age of Atonement: the Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), Note 9, pp. 255–267.
See Lubenow, op. cit., 1971, Note 37, p. 72
John Ludlow, The Autobiography of a Christian Socialist (London: Frank Cass, 1981), pp. 154–156.
Hansards 141 (1856), 140–141.
Cited in J. W. Gilbart, The Logic of Banking (London, 1859), pp. 548–549.
Duncan, Practical Directions for Forming and Managing Joint-Stock Companies (London, 1856), p. 48.
See Alborn, The Other Economists: Science and Commercial Culture in Victorian England (unpub. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1991).
Victor V. Branford, On the Correlation of Economics and Accountancy (London, pp. 38–42.
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Alborn, T.L. (1995). A Plague Upon Your House: Commercial Crisis and Epidemic Disease in Victorian England. In: Maasen, S., Mendelsohn, E., Weingart, P. (eds) Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors. Sociology of the Sciences, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0673-3_12
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