Seventeenth-century origins of the growth paradigm

This chapter begins by surveying a sample of civilizations, including ancient Mesopotamia, India&s;s Mauryan Empire, Tang-dynasty China, and fourteenth-century Maghreb, in each case parsing documents and other evidence that provide insight into behavioral and ideological phenomena that, prima facie , resemble the modern growth paradigm. It charts the advent of a new conception of time: abstract, infinite, and uniform, locked to the metronome of capital investment and increasingly connected to a social concern with quantification. The chapter also examines the interconnections between three major developments that were unfolding in seventeenth-century western Europe: maritime-colonial expansion, the scientific revolution, and the rise of capitalism. It explores their relationship to early scientific economics and to the &s;Eden project&s;: the crusade to create paradise on Earth by means of &s;improvement&s; and colonial plantation. These processes put wind in the sails of the idea of Progress and, simultaneously, facilitated the discursive construction of &s;the economy&s; as an entity subject to law-governed dynamics of growth.