Including a Symposium on the Historical Epistemology of Economics: Volume 35A

In this chapter, we investigate the physiocratic claim that political economy is a new science and shows that it covers a sophisticated and nuanced range of discourses and practices. François Quesnay, the founder of physiocracy, displayed a complex and original conception of science based on the entanglement of abstract knowledge with skilled practices and the importance of rooting science in the realm of bodily sensations. We show how he applied consistently this conception to physics (medicine), political economy, and geometry. We conclude by comparing the epistemology of some of his main disciples, especially Butré and Du Pont de Nemours, to that of Quesnay.

Diagrams are ubiquitous in economics and are uncontestably among the most used, if not the most important workhorses of economists, though they come in many forms. This essay examines the different uses of graphs and diagrams in the pioneering work of two Victorian economists, Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall. We stress the difference between their use as representations and as visual reasoning tools, a difference that became obscured in the twentieth century with the rise of econometrics.

A great deal of economic knowledge comes in the form of statistics, tables, graphs, and reports. In government, such materials often abound and point policymakers into different directions. Nonetheless, some materials evidently are more effective than others. Why is that? This chapter examines how high-level administrators reconfigure an institutional setup, so that it produces effective economic materials. A range of other supply-side strategies are discussed, too. The chapter takes a historical approach and focuses on actual practices. It examines activities and materials by rivaling actors in the American military administration of Germany, OMGUS, during 1945/46. The chapter finds that actors make materials effective through two interlocking strategies. First, actors re-engineer an institution in order to control which materials it produces and disseminates; second, actors align and adapt the specific content, form, and delivery of materials to their broader aim. The chapter supplements the economic history of Germany after World War II with a historical epistemologist perspective. It shows that the shift of US policy from economic restriction to reactivation was facilitated by a group of actors in OMGUS. By re-engineering the institution and creating official materials with a consistent narrative, they succeeded in transmitting their view, the need for economic reactivation, to the Washington administration.

Economic ideas are the product of contemplation, but also of our economic lives. In the history of ideas, Gérard Debreu’s shining book of 1959, Theory of Value, represents the pinnacle of purity in contemplating economic life. Rather than contextualizing this oeuvre through his intellectual life, as is usually done, this essay describes his axiomatic analysis by contextualizing it through his economic life. What do we learn about Debreu’s axioms on consumption when thinking of his own consumption? What do we learn about his theory of value when thinking of his own values? Historiographically, this approach permits the use of a widely neglected source in the history of economics: anecdotes. Epistemologically, blending axioms and anecdotes offers a description of how axioms regulate an economic discourse. Finally, this essay offers a language for the material dimensions of economic life that are so underexposed in Debreu’s own work.

The history of economics has often been described as the “history of economic thought.” In this essay, I explore an alternative perspective that builds on the French tradition of historical epistemology and treats economics as a social practice. I argue that a practice-based view provides a more philosophically robust conception of historiography and a richer field of investigation for historians of economics.

What are the value theories used by art economists which can help define the field as a unique research program? We categorize the research program in art economics in Lakatosian terms and find that art economists share a value system around art which is that art contains value beyond that of exchange. This difference introduces a “paradox” of value to be addressed (either implicitly or explicitly) by the art economist in practice, in that mainstream economics assumes value is realized through exchange only. We then survey the literature and find evidence to support this value paradox claim. We also find that the art economics research program does not adequately address the potentiality of the state using art as instrumental value and introduce political economy to factor in a self-interested state using art production as a means to reproduce and ideally expand state legitimacy and power in society. We then give two examples of art-statism in practice to illustrate the possibility of art’s instrumentality.

The basic ideas of Cournot and those who came after him are related to the recent work of Nash and his notion of an “equilibrium point.” It is shown that the Nash equilibrium point incorporates the main contribution of Cournot to the solution of the duopoly problem and that the major criticism that may be made against the Cournot equilibrium may also be made against the Nash equilibrium. It is then indicated to what use this weakness might be put in the study of bargaining.