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280 Germano Maifreda

The exponent of the Milan School most engaged in formalizing eco-
nomic discourse was the Barnabite Father Paolo Frisi, the first person
in the history of the field to apply differential and integral calculus –
not without provoking heated criticism from his contemporaries and
giving rise to a harsh methodological dispute. Mathematician, astronomer
– and, once again, a hydraulic engineer – Frisi took the mathematicized
mechanics perfected by Newton as his frame of reference, completing
the so-called ‘sixth edition’ of Pietro Verri’s Meditazioni in language
strongly influenced by physics.
The mindset of physics represented an overall filter through which
Frisi read the economic system as a whole, even in scientifically less
qualified material than Verri’s celebrated tract. The Milanese economists
were directly involved with the design and practical implementation of
the Theresian Reforms in the territories of the Austrian Lombardy. In
this way, the ‘public’ dimension became more prominent and intertwined
with the practical needs for reforms and the utilitarian language more
13
explicit and richer . On the occasion of the death of Maria Theresa of
Austria, Frisi’s Elogio a Maria Teresa imperatrice (1781), listed among
the most important fundamental principles characterizing her en-
lightened government the recognition of the fact – which he felt to be
indisputable – that «full and reciprocal competition and conflict always
increases the industry and wealth of bodies politic, as it increases the
14
mobility of elastic bodies» . In the same essay, Frisi cites the famous
Law of Prices postulated by Verri (whose view of Frisi and the theories
he formalized in his Meditazioni was not, in any case, wholly positive),
view which he had made explicit in a very sophisticated manner given
the culture of the century, which only in its last decades saw differential
15
calculus receive an overall theoretical formulation .
Frisi’s mechanical-mathematic recasting of Verri was famously de-
plored by Luigi Einaudi, who judged it a damaging blurring of the
16
originality of Verri’s thought . The fact that this project was already
strongly criticized in the late 1700s allows us a glimpse into the

13 P.L. Porta, Italy, cit., p. 63.
14 P. Tubaro, Un’esperienza peculiare del Settecento italiano, cit., pp. 202-3.
15 It should be recalled that already in 1748 Gaetana Maria Agnesi published in
Milan her Intuizioni analitiche, in the same year in which Euler printed his Introductio in
analysin infinitorum: see F. Minozio, Chiarezza e metodo: L’indagine scientifica di Maria
Gaetana Agnesi, Como: New Press, 2006.
16 On the «illuministic friendship» between Frisi and Verri see G. Barbarisi, Frisi e
Verri: storia di un’amicizia illuministica, in G. Barbarisi (ed.), Ideologia e scienza nell’opera
di Paolo Frisi (1728-1784): Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Milan, FrancoAngeli,
1987, vol. 2, pp. 353-379 and C. Capra, Nota introduttiva, in C. Capra (ed.), Per Paolo
Frisi: Lettere e memorie (1782-1787). Edizione nazionale delle opere di Pietro Verri, vol. 6,
Scritti politici della maturità, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 2010, pp. 145-54.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XV - Agosto 2018 n.43
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)