4 - Jevons: mathematics, mechanics and marginalism

Summary

William Stanley Jevons is the first main author of the marginal revolution. At first sight his work is very similar to that of Gossen. Jevons acknowledges the importance of Gossen’s writings: “Gossen has completely anticipated me as regards the general principles and method of the theory of Economics” (Jevons 1879: xxxviii). There are also, however, some substantial differences between the two.

First of all, Jevons’s analysis departs explicitly from the moral philosophy of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), called “utilitarianism” (see below). Furthermore, Jevons puts an even stronger emphasis on mathematics than Gossen, and in particular on calculus. Finally, Jevons goes beyond Gossen when he realizes that the theory of rent, which we discussed in chapter 2, is “a theory of a distinctively mathematical character, which seems to give a clue to the correct mode of treating the whole science” (Jevons 1879: vi). In other words, Jevons realized that the theory of rent could be transformed into a general theory of economics. This insight was worked out further by Alfred Marshall and John Bates Clark, as we will investigate in our chapter 7.

Jevons’s main work in economic theory, The Theory of Political Economy, was published for the first time in 1871. He had already presented a “Notice of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy” at a conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (now known as the British Science Association) in 1862, and in 1866 he published an article titled “A brief account of a general mathematical theory of political economy” in the Journal of the Statistical Society. These works did not, however, receive a lot of attention. The second edition of Jevons’s Theory of Political Economy (TPE), which appeared in 1879, was a substantial revision and extension, and in what follows we will refer to this text.

Jevons argues that “political economy” has to be replaced by the more convenient term “economics”, as it is similar to the names of other branches of human knowledge, and as several important economists (including Marshall) were already using this concept (Jevons 1879: xiv).