Davanzati e Hobbes: nascita e diffusione di un paradigma (XVI-XVIII secolo) (Davanzati e Hobbes: birth and spread of a paradigm, 16th to 18th centuries)

The formative stages of economic science, in the early modern period, can be roughly broken down into three phases: medical, iatromechanical, and physico-deductive, all being part of a same paradigm. This paper traces the origins of economic modelling, related to the advent of the individualistic approach, through telling an unknown story. It argues that the idea of economics as social medicine took form in Renaissance Italy, under the influence of Florentine Platonism. Then in the 17th century, it was exported to England, becoming part of Petty’s and the arithmetic politicians’ background. At the core of this process was Hobbes’ reception of Davanzati – the father of political anatomy as well as of the notion of artificial man – during his voyages through Italy, where he also absorbed Galilean philosophy. Between 17th and 18th century, Italian economics shifted to physics: by adopting a geometrical method, it grew up and got refined but, in spite of this, it lost some of its international appeal, since a series of political, economic, and cultural transformations had led to a change of balance between the European powers. On the other hand, the Physiocratic system (Quesnay’s organicism) is here presented as the sole historical alternative to constructivist pre-classical economics.