Part 2
Name
Institution of Affiliation
Date
Physics and the ‘marginalist revolution’
1. What are the three motivations that give interest in neoclassical theory?
These motivations include, antiquarian, epistemological, and ontological. (Page 361)
2. What is epistemological?
It is the methods of great discoverers are held to provide an exemplar for currently accepted methods of research. (Page 361)
3. Why is William’s writing seems to be true?
It was practical and it provided a reservoir of metaphors and theoretical suggestions which might serve to prompt novel contemporary lines of inquiry which are obscured or slighted by modern theory. (Page 361)
4. What could be the effect of having doubt to over the origins of modern neoclassical theory?
It may lead into serious historical, epistemological, ontological and practical confusions in its exposition. (Page 361)
5. What did neoclassical economists discover about each other?
They came to reorganize each other was a mathematical theorist. (Page 362)
6. What can you refer as having scientific character?
It is having concern to differentiate your hard work from previous people’s work. (Page 362)
7. What is internalizing version as used in intellectual history?
It is the theory that assumes all ideas are merely reactions to previous developments internal to the discipline under consideration. (Page 362)
8. What is the work of intellectual historian?
It is to trace the descent of ideas from scientist to scientist through time, revealing how error was rooted out by the internal criticism of logical deduction and empirical testing, while scientific truths were preserved and nurtured. (Page 362)
9. What is the work externalist intellectual historian?
He identifies the link between an historical interlude and the construction and acceptance of a successful theory, without expending undue effort to trace the intellectual pedigree of its’ precursors within the science. (Page 362)
10. How did Bukharin view the work of externalist intellectual historian to be?
He saw it as a reflection of some general Kantian influences in conjunction with the assertion that the economy of mid-nineteenth century Europe was actually characterized by atomistic competition. (Page 362)
11. When did neoclassical theory start?
It started in the mid of 19th century. (Page 363)
12. What is utility according to Jevon?
Utility only exists when there is on the one side the person wanting, and on the other the thing wanted. (Page 363)
13. What is notion of the hierarchy of sciences?
It justifies a calculus of moral effects, a kind of physical astronomy investigating the mutual perturbations of individuals. (Page 363)
14. What is reduction of social processes to simple utilitarian considerations compared to?
It is compared to the reduction of meteorology to chemistry and thence to physics, implying that there is only one scientific methodology and one mode of explanation. (Page 363)
15. What is pure science?
It is only concerned with the relationships among things, the ‘play of the blind and ineluctable forces of nature’ which are independent of all human. (Page 364)
16. Who was Pareto?
He was the first neoclassical who defended himself from mathematicians and physicists attacks. (Page 364)
17. How many discrete periods make history of physics?
The history of physics is made up of two discrete periods. (Page 365)
18. What is physics?
It’s a common word that refers to the united study of mechanics, light, and heat. (Page 366)
19. What was the effect of watershed in physics?
It altered the subject, the techniques of research, and the methods of description. (Page 366)
20. What cause the invention of neoclassical economic theory?
It was caused by the rise of energetics in physical theory by providing the mathematical techniques, and the new attitudes toward theory construction. (Page 366)
MENGER, JEVONS AND WALRAS DE-HOMOGENIZED
1. What is marginal revolution?
It is the starting point and the stimulus for much of the theoretical development. (Page 512)
2. What is classical theory?
It is the first theory that existed in economic field before marginal revolution. (Page 512)
3. Why was it difficult to differentiate the historians?
Menger, Jevons and Walras had common things that made people not easily differentiate them. (Page 512)
4. When did Schumpeter realize the difference of the three historians?
He singled out Walras from the others as the sole architect of the general equilibrium structure. (Page 512)
5. What did Jevon do best?
He discovered the general equilibrium system. (Page 513)
6. What did Walras do funny?
Instead of climbing up from marginal utility to the level of his general equilibrium system, Walras actually climbed down from that level to marginal utility. (Page 513)
7. How did Pallas do to ensure that the equilibrium utility gets out of market?
He followed the same order of exposition as the Walras to arrive on his ideas. (Page 513)
8. What did Walras came to possess his concept of marginal cost?
He came into possession of marginal cost after clearly outlining his mathematical theory of a network of interrelated markets. (Page 513)
9. What were other achievements of Walras?
He derived some of the main structural features of his theory of market exchange as well as suggestions for his theory of money and capital formation. (Page 514)
10. What was Uon Walras weakness?
He was able to sketch a pure theory of interconnected markets though he still had no notion of how to relate utility to demand. (Page 514)
11. Why was it difficult to relate absolute value and demand?
It is because the intense dimension of utility seems to be unmeasurable. (Page 514)
12. Why did Walars seek help from Paul?
He wanted to prove utility in orderly sense of scarcity. (Page 515)
13. How did Walars define scarcity?
He defined it as disproportion between the aggregate quantity of a good available and the sum total, over all individuals, of wants for the good. (Page 515)
14. Why did Walars pass the idea to his son?
He did so because he was not able to define further the meaning of some words in the law. (Page 515)
15. What made Walars son not to achieve principle also?
The machine for determining equilibrium was already made. (Page 515)
16. What is catallactic theory?
It is the theory of the determination of prices under a hypothetical regime of perfectly free competition. (Page 516)
17. How can one distribute his income?
In a way as to equalize the utility of the final increments of all commodities consumed. (Page 517)
18. How did Jevon describe perfect market?
In a perfect market there must be no conspiracies for absorbing and holding supplies to produce unnatural ratios of exchange. (Page 517)
19. What could have Jevon do in economics?
He could deal with the law of demand than trying to determine the law of utility. (Page 518)
20. What is the effect of having the magnitude of price as the essential feature of exchange?
It can lead to further error of regarding the quantities of goods in an exchange as equivalents. (Page 519)
Was There a Marginal Revolution?
1. What is marginal revolution?
It refers to complete discovery principal of diminishing marginal utility as the fundamental building block of a new kind of static microeconomics. (Page 269)
2. What is the work of intellectual historians?
They identify the difference existing in economics. (Page 269)
3. Was there anything in common in Jevons and Walras writings?
No, this is because everyone was independent on his own. (Page 269)
4. What led to search alternative economic models?
It because there was no real sense of intellectual crisis in the 1860’s either in England or on the Continent. (Page 270)
5. What was Robert Merton’s discovery in the history of sciences?
He views all scientific discoveries are in principle multiples, including those that on the surface appear to be singletons. (Page 270)
6. What did Robert say about the evidences in the history of sciences?
That they testify then to the hypothesis that, once science has become institutionalized and significant numbers of men are at work on scientific investigation the same discoveries will be made independently more than once. (Page 270)
7. was marginal utility principle a perfectly predictable phenomenon?
No, because there was no one economic science. (Page 271)
8. How many models of economic science existed?
At least two existed in United States and in England. (Page 271)
9. What is theory of political economy?
It was a book written by Menger about economics. (Page 272)
10. Was marginal utility discovered or recovered?
The marginal utility was discovered at its own. (Page 273)
11. Why did Jennings rediscover marginal utility?
He wanted to use it in analyzing consumer behavior. (Page 273)
12. What can we do in order to take Merton’s argument seriously?
By denying all the other theories and taking this into details. (Page 273)
13. What could be the effect if we take communication between the scientists to be perfect?
All multiples would be forestalled and we would only observe singletons. (Page 274)
14. What is theory of demand?
Its theory of price determination would sooner or later strike someone as peculiarly asymmetrical. (Page 274)
15. What did the new principle focus on?
It focused on demand more than supply and on consumer utility than on production cost. (Page 275)
16. Why was it difficult to sustain the thesis that Jevons, Menger, and Walras were really preoccupied with the same paradigm?
This was due to their age differences and also each had his own views on the science of economics. (Page 275)
17. Why did Walrar formulate Gossen’s third law?
He was deeply suspicious of all determinate theory of pricing and he underlined discontinuities, uncertainties, and bargaining around the market price. (Page 275)
18. Why did Jevon formulate a theory of barter exchange?
Because it had no mathematical statement that made Gossen’s third law to be difficult nad challenging to understand. (Page 276)
19. Where did Walras derive demand curves from?
He derived them from utility schedules. (Page 276)
20. What was the importance of marginal utility?
It gradually deprived of all its bite, to end up as merely revealed preferences. (Page 276)
