Social gravity

The Social gravity as an application of Newtonian gravity to the system of commerce [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4074/is_200607/ai_n17182620 'Social Gravity' and the Translatio Tradition in Early American Theories of Empire] ] influence. For instance in The Administration of the Colonies (1764), Thomas Pownall (1722-1805) had used the Newtonian concept of "attraction" to form the basis of his political and commercial theory of empire. Pownall's vision provided an important explanation of the mechanism by which colonial theorists understood the possibility of empire being "transferred" from one state to another. Pownall applied the Newtonian concept of gravity to his theory of empire, as evident in his suggestion that the "laws of nature" held the colonies to Great Britain in a manner "analogous in all cases, by which the center of gravity in the solar system" held the planets in their orbits. In making this analogy, Pownall's notion of 'social gravity' drew upon earlier visions of social cohesion, particularly ideas of sociability in eighteenth-century Britain. These ideas, in turn, were often predicated upon Stoic notions of cosmopolitanism, expressed by the key term oikeiosis, in order to stress the "moral" imperative for like-minded humans to forge bonds dedicated to the common good.

References