Hostname: page-component-669899f699-7xsfk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-24T23:06:39.010Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Marshall and the Mathematization of Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Andres Vazquez
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Historians of economic thought have long debated about the methodological position adopted by Alfred Marshall (1842–1924) concerning the mathematization of economics. While Francis Y. Edgeworth and Marshall's pupils, most notably A. C. Pigou and J. M. Keynes, agreed that it was mainly through him that mathematical economics has since become respectable (see Pigou 1925, p. 66) and proclaimed him the founder of modern diagrammatic economics (ibid., p. 24), more recent commentators have criticized his failure to give proper credit to mathematics, and have even depicted him as an enemy of such an approach (see, for example, Schumpeter 1951, p. 97; Coase 1975; Brems 1975; Creedy 1986, p. 126; Schabas 1989; Huriot 1994, p. 17).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , Fall 1995 , pp. 247 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Becher, Harvey W. 1971. William Whewell and Cambridge Mathematics, Ph. D. thesis, University of Missouri.Google Scholar
Brems, Hans. 1975. “Marshall on Mathematics” Journal of Law and Economics, 18, no. 2, 583–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, R. H. 1975. “Marshall on Method” Journal of Law and Economics, 18, no. 1, 25–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, R. H. 1984. “Alfred Marshall's Mother and Father” History of Political Economy, 16, no. 4, 519–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1967. “Alfred Marshall and the Early Development of the London School of Economics: Some Unpublished Letters” Economica, 34, no. 136, 408–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cochrane, James L. 1975. “William Whewell's Mathematical Statements” Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies, 43, no. 4, 396–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collard, David A. 1968. “Introduction” to Tozer, J. E., Mathematical Investigation of the Effect of Machinery, Augustus M. Kelly, New York.Google Scholar
Creedy, John. 1986. Edgeworth and the Development of Neoclassical Economics, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Creedy, John. 1990. “Marshall and International Trade” in Whitaker, 1990, 79–107.Google Scholar
Creedy, John. 1992. Demand and Exchange in Economic Analysis, Edward Elgar, Aldershot.Google Scholar
Dimand, Robert W. 1988. “An Early Canadian Contribution to Mathematical Economics: J. B. Cherriman's 1857 review of Cournot” Canadian Journal of Economics, 21, no. 3, 610–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gårlund, Torsten. 1958. The Life of Knut Wicksell, Almqvist and Wicksell, Stockholm.Google Scholar
Groenewegen, Peter D. 1990. “Marshall on Taxation” in Tullberg, 1990, 91–112.Google Scholar
Guillebaud, Claude W. 1965. “The Marshall-Macmillan Correspondence over the Book System” Economic Journal, 74, no. 299, 518–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, James P. 1973. “William Whewell's Mathematical Statements of Price Flexibility, Demand Elasticity and the Giffen Paradox” Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies, 41, no. 3, 329–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, James P. 1985. “The Whewell Group of Mathematical Economists” Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies, 53, no. 4, 404–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hicks, John R. 1930. “Edgeworth, Marshall and the Indeterminateness of Wages” Economic Journal, 40, no. 158, 215–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huriot, Jean-Marie. 1994. “Qui a peur des mathématiques? Histoire d'un faux débat” in Huriot, J. M., ed., Economie, mathématiques et methodologie, Economica, Paris, 11–50.Google Scholar
Hutchison, T. W. 1953. A Review of Economic Doctrines, 1870–1929, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966.Google Scholar
Jaffé, William. ed. 1965. Correspondence of Léon Walras and Related Papers, 3 vols., North Holland Publishing, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Macgregor, D. H. 1942. “Marshall and His Book” Economica, 9, no. 36, 313–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Alfred. 1879. The Pure Theory of Foreign Trade; The Pure Theory of Domestic Values; reprint, Augustus M. Kelley, New York, 1974.Google Scholar
Marshall, Alfred. 1885. “On the Graphic Method of Statistics” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Jubilee volume, 06, 251–60; reprinted, corrected, in Pigou, 1925, 175–87.Google Scholar
Marshall, Alfred. 1892. “The Perversion of Economic History: A Reply” Economic Journal, 2, no. 7, 507–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Alfred. 1893. “On Rent” Economic Journal, 3, no. 9, 74–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Alfred. 1898. “Distribution and Exchange” Economic Journal, 8, no. 29, 37–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Alfred. 1933. “Alfred Marshall, the Mathematician, as Seen by Himself” Econometrica, 1, no. 2, 221–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Alfred. 1961. Principles of Economics, edited by Guillebaud, C. W., ninth (variorum) edition, vol. 1, Text; vol. 2, Notes, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 1990. “Smooth Operator: How Marshall's Demand and Supply Curves Made Neoclassicism Safe for Public Consumption but Unfit for Science” in Tullberg, 1990, 61–90.Google Scholar
O'Brian, Denis P. 1990. “Marshall's Work in Relation to Classical Economics” in Whitaker, 1990, 127–63.Google Scholar
Pigou, A. C., ed. 1925. Memorials of Alfred Marshall; reprint, Augustus M. Kelly, New York, 1966.Google Scholar
Pigou, A. C. 1953. Alfred Marshall and Current Thought, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Richards, Joan. 1988. Mathematical Visions: the Pursuit of Geometry in Victorian England, Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Schabas, Margaret. 1989. “Alfred Marshall, W. Stanley Jevons, and the Mathematization of Economics” Isis, 80, no. 301, 60–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1951. Ten Great Economists, Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1954. History of Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Shove, Gerald F. 1942. “The Place of Marshall's Principles in the Development of Economic Theory” Economic Journal, 52, no. 208, 294–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stigler, George J. 1965. Essays in the History of Economics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Tullberg, Rita M. ed. 1990. Alfred Marshall in Retrospect, Edward Elgar, Aldershot.Google Scholar
Urrutia, Juan. 1983. Economía neoclásica, Ediciones Pirámide, Madrid.Google Scholar
Viner, Jacob. 1941. “Marshall's Economics, in Relation to the Man and to His Times” American Economic Review, 31, no. 2, 223–35.Google Scholar
Whitaker, John K. ed. 1975. The Early Economic Writings of Alfred Marshall, 1867–1890, 2 vols., Macmillan Press Ltd., London.Google Scholar
Whitaker, John K. ed. 1990. Centenary Essays on Alfred Marshall, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar