Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Tim Johnson — Nectar for the gods: how money made Western culture different
A new theory of money consistent with chartalism that posits the invention of money as the chief cause that Western intellectual style of thinking uniquely arose from the then ubiquitous mythical thinking. Definitely worth a read. It's highly speculative but quite intriguing. I would have to read the references to come to a more informed conclusion about this novel approach to money as the foundation stone of Western civilization.
Magic, Maths, and Money — The Relationship between Science and Finance
Nectar for the gods: how money made Western culture different
Tim Johnson | Lecturer in Financial Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
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14 comments:
The book Money: The Unauthorized Biography, by Felix Martin, covers the importance of money in the development of Greek culture. It seemed reasonable to me.
"but having read Richard Seaford's book, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, it seems to have..."
ok I CHALLENGE anyone to tell me what the Greek word that can ACCURATELY be translated as "money" is?????
Any takers?
I thought not....
Well, FWIW, I have not read Seaford's book, nor am I inclined to do so, so my remarks may not be fair, but I got a feeling of ethnocentrism as I was reading Johnson. Besides, "cash" comes from the Chinese. Why did we borrow the word from them if our own concept of money was so all fired important? And yes, Westerners were great traders, but so were the Arabs, from whom we got the concepts of zero and negative numbers, which are important for our modern notion of debt based money.
As for differences between the Ancient Greek concept of money and the Ancient Babylonian concept of money, isn't it culture that made those concepts different, and not money that made the cultures different? Ah! That is where I get the sense of ethnocentrism. The Ancient Greek idea is considered to be the true concept of money, while the Ancient Babylonian idea is not.
Twas the People's Fiefdom that put the "fi" into "fiat."
This is from Tim:
"Reading Richard Seaford's book emphasises to me the importance of developing a shared conception of what money actually is. His argument stresses the importance of money as being something that is shared by and connects a community. In this respect people need to control currency, not banks, and there needs to be more deliberation about what the financial system is about: profit maximisation or social cohesion? It also has implications in the Scottish Independence Referendum: why would an independent Scotland, with a unique identity, want to share a currency with the rest of the UK?"
Tim starts talking about "money" and then all of a sudden changes over to "currency".... these two words are not synonymous... so "money" is a metonym and a word for which there is no Greek equivalent, while "currency" they did have that word which is nomisma in Greek...
So the Greeks never got caught up in all of the present day confusion we see today over "money" as they kept the terminology straight... they had nomisma which we would call currency/state currency and they had argurion which we call silver today and they did not conflate these words via the use of a metonym such as "money"...
It starts with the basic language and we have to maintain a pattern or "stencil" wrt our words or things start to get mixed up... keeping the terminology consistent is a big help...
rsp,
Guess I'll mix up the confusion a little bit bit more by adding in the word or term "extender" (prosthetic) to those other ones of "money" and "currency":-
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~kwn/Kosslyn_pdfs/2006Kosslyn_chap_in_EvCogNeuro_SocialProstheticSystems.pdf
Matt, according to Wikipedia, nomisma meant "money" in ancient Greek, and it means "currency" in modern Greek.
currency (n.)
1650s, "condition of flowing," from Latin currens, present participle of currere "to run" (see current (adj.)); the sense of a flow or course extended 1699 (by John Locke) to "circulation of money."
Online Etymological Dictionary
Looks like "currency" as a term and associated concept is of later origin.
Looks interesting, Schofield. Look forward to reading it. It's an important idea in that it shows how self-interest gets extended socially to become more universal through coordination.
A dichotomy between self-interest and universality, individualism and altruism is often drawn, but these are extremes of a range that is mediated by "extenders" that works for each and all through voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit. It’s an autocatalytic and synergistic process that is also symbiotic with the environment.
The point being that you can "extend" Kosslyn's idea to that of money/currency and then you have the elusive link between morality and money. You hire a lawyer to increase your knowledge of the law and you pay your taxes to hire policemen to help you sleep sound at night.
Well, an initial extender, as Innes and Graeber point out, was reciprocity and mutual obligation, which matured into credit-debt as a custom that was eventually codified institutionally, e.g. accounting and law, and into "money" and "money things" as tangible tokens of money as an intangible idea (unit of account, means of deferred payment, medium of exchange and store of value).
Even non-human forms of life use extenders involving reciprocity and mutuality, just as they use signaling in communication, which is the beginning of language.
Yep. Kosslyn extends the notion of cultural symbiosis particularly as a consequence of our development of language and in doing so reveals money to also be a sort of symbiont that works alongside our symbiont use of his Social Prosthetic System.
Tom can't be true.... 'money' comes from the Latin as a metonym based on the Roman mint at the Temple of Juno-Moneta which was a ROMAN temple. .. which comes centuries later... (also from Wikipedia. ...)
If you look at Aristotle he wrote it came from law (nomos) hence they termed it nomisma. ..
Silver and cowrie shells don't come from law... they are just happened upon..
If you read the Greek they write of nomisma and argurion they never conflate these two.... they would make things out of argurion such as coins and idol images but they would spend and tax in nomisma. ...
Libertarians of all sects have a hard time understanding this... and the significance.
Probably some libertarian wrote that at wiki....
Rsp
Tim perhaps could write the title:
"How a different culture in the west avoided the use of money and instead used nomisma..."
Or
"How the west differentiated itself by avoiding the use of money and instead used nomisma ...."
Something like that....
It didn't 'evolve' as 'money' from the apes, it was carefully thought about and designed by competent and qualified technical specialists who came up with 'nomisma' back then as a complimentary system to support their govt institutions.
Rsp
"Money" is now an ambiguous term in ordinary language, which is why MMT economists avoid it if they can further specify the meaning they intend. But it is still useful as a general category. See Randy's paper entitled, "Money."
I don't think it is possible to technically specify the meaning of ancient terms that were not defined technically. Aristotle define some terms technically in a different way than did his teacher Plato, for example, and they the use the same sign as different symbols.
For example, in Aristotle "nomisma" signifies the idea (concept) of money. This would be different from various money things like precious metals that were used at the time. Aristotle realized that the "essence" of money as an idea — he was an essentialist — was custom and law. Different tangible tokens would be used in exchange that fit into this category.
But the token is not the unit of account, even if the unit of account is a specified weight of a metal. The specified weight of the metal is the unit of account, not the physical objects used.
Aristotle was one of the first to distinguish between a set and its members in analyzing epistemology. The characteristics that define a set are the essence of the idea. The members of the set that fit the characteristics are accidental to the set and come and go, while the "essence" is permanent, even if there are no members of the set.
BTW, see Wikipedia solidus (coin).
The solidus (plural solidi) was introduced by Constantine I in 312 AD, permanently replacing the aureus as the gold coin of the Roman Empire. The solidus was struck at a rate of 72 to a Roman pound (est. 328.9 g) of pure gold, each coin weighing twenty-four Greco-Roman carats,[1] or about 4.5 grams of gold per coin. By this time, the solidus was worth 275,000 increasingly debased denarii.
The solidus was maintained essentially unaltered in weight, dimensions and purity until the 10th century. During the sixth and seventh centuries "lightweight" solidi of 20, 22 or 23 siliquae (one siliqua is 1/24 of a solidus) were struck along with the standard weight issues, presumably for trade purposes or to pay tribute. Many of these lightweight coins have been found in Europe, Russia and Georgia. The lightweight solidi were distinguished by different markings on the coin, usually in the exergue for the 20 and 22 siliquae coins and by stars in the field for the 23 siliquae coins.
Solidus of Constantine I, minted in 324/5 AD
In theory the solidus was struck from pure gold, but because of the limits of refining techniques, in practice the coins were often about 23k fine. In the Greek-speaking world during the Roman period and then in the Byzantine economy the solidus was known as the nomisma (plural nomismata).[1] In the 10th century Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas (963-969) introduced a new lightweight gold coin called the tetarteron nomisma that circulated alongside the solidus, and from that time the solidus (nomisma) became known as the histamenon nomisma in the Greek speaking world. Initially it was difficult to distinguish the tetarteron nomisma and the histamenon nomisma because the coins had the same design, dimensions and purity, and there were no marks of value to distinguish the denominations. The only difference was the weight. The tetarteron nomisma was a lighter coin of approximately 4.05 grams and the histamenon nomisma maintained the traditional weight of 4.5 grams. To eliminate confusion between the new denomination and the old denomination, starting during the reign of Basil II (975-1025) the shape of the solidus (histamenon nomisma) was struck as a thinner coin with a larger diameter, but with the same weight and purity as before. From the middle of the eleventh century the large diameter histamenon nomisma was struck on a concave flan, though the smaller tetarteron nomisma continued to be struck on a smaller flat flan.
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