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The sweeping story of how the greatest minds of the Scientific Revolution applied their new ideas to people, money, and markets - and along the way, invented modern finance. Money for Nothing chronicles the moment when the needs of war, discoveries of natural philosophy, and ambitions of investors collided. It's about how the Scientific Revolution intertwined with finance to set England - and the world - off in an entirely new direction.At the dawn of the eighteenth century, England was running out of money due to a prolonged war with France. Parliament tried raising additional funds by selling debt to its citizens, taking in money now with the promise of interest later. It was the first permanent national debt, but still they needed more. They turned to the stock market - a relatively new invention itself - where Isaac Newton's new mathematics of change over time, which he applied to the motions of the planets and the natural world, were fast being applied to the world of money.