Life and Influences
Petty was a founder member of The Royal Society. He was born and buried in Romsey and was a contemporary and friend of Samuel Pepys.
Petty is best known for economic history and statistic writings, pre-Adam Smith. Of particular interest were Petty's forays into statistical analysis. Petty's work in political arithmetic, along with the work of John Graunt, laid the foundation for modern census techniques. Moreover, this work in statistical analysis, when further expanded by writers like Josiah Child, documented some of the first expositions of modern insurance. Vernon Louis Parrington notes him as an early expositor of the labor theory of value as discussed in Treatise of Taxes in 1692.
In 1858, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, one of Petty's descendants erected a memorial and likeness of Petty in Romsey Abbey. The text on it reads: "a true patriot and a sound philosopher who, by his powerful intellect, his scientific works and indefatigable industry, became a benefactor to his family and an ornament to his country". His grave slab on the floor of the south choir aisle reads HERE LAYES SIR WILLIAM PETY.
Read more about this topic: William Petty
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or influences:
“On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw
A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw,
A Buddha, hand at rest,
Hand lifted up that blest;
And right between these two a girl at play
That, it may be, had danced her life away....”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education, feel a politely disguised contempt for it; and thus the study of one of the most pervasive and powerful influences on human life is traduced and neglected.”
—Yvor Winters (19001968)