The Idea of a Moral Economy: Gerard of Siena on Usury, Restitution, and Prescription by Lawrin Armstrong
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reviewed by: The Idea of a Moral Economy: Gerard of Siena on Usury, Restitution, and Prescription by Lawrin Armstrong Sybil M. Jack Armstrong, Lawrin, The Idea of a Moral Economy: Gerard of Siena on Usury, Restitution, and Prescription (Toronto Studies in Medieval Law), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2016; cloth; pp. 344; R.R.P. CA $75.00; ISBN 9781442643222. This is a valuable transcription of the scarce manuscripts of Gerard of Siena's contributions to theological and legal debate about usury with a very acceptable straightforward, if not always totally precise, and intelligible translation of the original Latin. The structure of the volume makes the medieval approach to argument and its basic, unchallenged theories of natural law, positive law, canon and civil law clear. Given the massive historiography on medieval ideas about what we call (but they did not) the economy, original material added must be judged on the extent to which it adds to our understanding of both the medieval approach and its underlying beliefs. This work does both. Produced in the period of economic instability after the 2008 collapse it is also unexpectedly part of a current academic discussion on the problems of material inequality in which medieval ideas on the priority of the common good rather than private profit have developed an immediate relevance. Its brief introduction, which sets the context in which Gerard wrote and the works of those with whom he debated and who later maintained his argument, would serve as an excellent start for undergraduates confronting the issues and the period for the first time. The author establishes the confrontation of the ideas of the period and their opposition to modern theories, pointing out where the medieval imperative for social and political rights and their view of debt and the fictitious nature of 'money exchange' differ from current economic assumptions. Armstrong suggests that a reassessment of some of the arguments may provide a new perspective on present entrenched neoliberal orthodoxy about markets. To bring together in this way intellectual history and economic history is an admirable proposal and this translation a good point to start. [End Page 271] Sybil M. Jack The University of Sydney Copyright © 2017 Sybil M. Jack
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".