[William Stanley Jevons]

William Stanley Jevons (September 1, 1835 - August 13, 1882), English economist and logician, was born in Liverpool. He expounded in his book The Theory of Political Economy (1871) the "final" (marginal) utility theory of value. Jevons' work, along with similar discoveries made by Carl Menger in Vienna (1871) and by Léon Walras in Switzerland (1874), marked the opening of a new period in the history of economic thought. Image File history File links Jevons. ... Image File history File links Jevons. ... September 1 is the 244th day of the year (245th in leap years). ... | Come and take it, slogan of the Texas Revolution 1835 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... August 13 is the 225th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (226th in leap years), with 140 days remaining. ... 1882 (MDCCCLXXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location (dark green) within the British Isles Languages English (de facto) Capital London de facto Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population – Total (mid-2004) – Total (2001 Census) – Density Ranked 1st... An economist is an individual who studies, develops, and applies theories and concepts from economics, and writes about economic policy. ... A logician is a philosopher, mathematician, or other whose topic of scholarly study is logic. ... Liverpool waterfront by night, as seen from the Wirral. ... This article is about utility in economics and in game theory. ... Austrian School economist Carl Menger Carl Menger Carl Menger (February 28, 1840 – February 26, 1921) was the founder of the Austrian School of economics. ... Marie-Ésprit-Léon Walras (December 16, 1834 in Évreux, France - January 5, 1910 in Clarens, near Montreux, Switzerland) was a French economist, considered by Joseph Schumpeter as the greatest of all economists. He was a mathematical economist associated with the creation of the general equilibrium theory. ... 1874 (MDCCCLXXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...

Jevons broke off his studies of the natural sciences in London in 1854 to work as an assayer in Sydney, where he acquired an interest in political economy. Returning to England in 1859, he published General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy in 1862, outlining the marginal utility theory of value, and A Serious Fall in the Value of Gold in 1863. For Jevons, the utility or value to a consumer of an additional unit of a product is inversely related to the number of units of that product he already owns, at least beyond some critical quantity. This article is about the Australian city. ... Political economy was the original term for the study of production, the acts of buying and selling, and their relationships to laws, customs and government. ... In economics, marginalism is the belief that economic value is set by the consumers marginal utility. ...

It was for The Coal Question (1865), in which he called attention to the gradual exhaustion of Britain's coal supplies, that he received public recognition. The most important of his works on logic and scientific methods is his Principles of Science (1874), as well as The Theory of Political Economy (1871) and The State in Relation to Labour (1882). Coal is a fossil fuel extracted from the ground by underground mining or open-pit mining (surface mining). ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, (but coming to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of criteria for the evaluation of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy among philosophers. ... Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for the investigation of phenomena and the acquisition of new knowledge of the natural world, as well as the correction and integration of previous knowledge, based on observable, empirical, measurable evidence, and subject to laws of reasoning. ...

Background

His father, Thomas Jevons, a man of strong scientific tastes and a writer on legal and economic subjects, was an iron merchant. His mother was the daughter of William Roscoe. At the age of fifteen he was sent to London to attend University College School. He appears at this time to have already formed the belief that important achievements as a thinker were possible to him, and at more than one critical period in his career this belief was the decisive factor in determining his conduct. Towards the end of 1853, after having spent two years at University College, where his favourite subjects were chemistry and botany, he unexpectedly received the offer of the assayership to the new mint in Australia. The idea of leaving England was distasteful, but pecuniary considerations had, in consequence of the failure of his father's firm in 1847, become of vital importance, and he accepted the post. William Roscoe (March 8, 1753 - June 30, 1831), was an English historian and miscellaneous writer. ... University College School entrance, Frognal, Hampstead University College School, known generally as UCS, is a British independent school situated in Hampstead, northwest London. ... Multicolored chemicals are frequent hallmarks of chemistry. ... Botany is the scientific study of plantlife. ...

He left England for Sydney in June 1854, and remained there for five years. At the end of that period he resigned his appointment, and in the autumn of 1859 entered again as a student at University College London, proceeding in due course to the B.A. and M.A. degrees of the University of London. He now gave his principal attention to the moral sciences, but his interest in natural science was by no means exhausted: throughout his life he continued to write occasional papers on scientific subjects, and his intimate knowledge of the physical sciences greatly contributed to the success of his chief logical work, The Principles of Science. Not long after taking his M.A. degree Jevons obtained a post as tutor at Owens College, Manchester. This article is about the Australian city. ... University College London, commonly known as UCL, is one of the colleges that make up the University of London. ... Senate House, designed by Charles Holden, home to the universitys central administrative offices and its library The University of London is a federation of colleges and institutes which together constitute one of the worlds largest universities. ... The Victoria University of Manchester (VUM) was a large university in Manchester in England. ...

In 1866 he was elected professor of logic and mental and moral philosophy and Cobden professor of political economy in Owens college. Next year he married Harriet Ann Taylor, whose father had been the founder and proprietor of the Manchester Guardian. Jevons suffered a good deal from ill health and sleeplessness, and found the delivery of lectures covering so wide a range of subjects very burdensome. In 1876 he was glad to exchange the Owens professorship for the professorship of political economy in University College, London. Travelling and music were the principal recreations of his life; but his health continued to be bad, and he suffered from depression. He found his professorial duties increasingly irksome, and feeling that the pressure of literary work left him no spare energy, he decided in 1880 to resign the post. On the 13th of August 1882 he was drowned whilst bathing near Hastings. 1866 (MDCCCLXVI) is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar. ... The Guardian was also the name of a U.S. television series. ... Political economy was the original term for the study of production, the acts of buying and selling, and their relationships to laws, customs and government. ... The Front Quad University College London, commonly known as UCL, is one of the colleges that make up the University of London. ... For other uses, see Hastings (disambiguation). ...

Throughout his life he had pursued with devotion and industry the ideals with which he had set out, and his journal and letters display a noble simplicity of disposition and an unswerving honesty of purpose. He was a prolific writer, and at the time of his death he occupied the foremost position in England both as a logician and as an economist. Alfred Marshall said of his work in economics that it "will probably be found to have more constructive force than any, save that of Ricardo, that has been done during the last hundred years." At the time of his death he was engaged upon an economic work that promised to be at least as important as any that he had previously undertaken. It would be difficult to exaggerate the loss which logic and political economy sustained through the accident by which his life was prematurely cut short. Alfred Marshall Alfred Marshall (July 26, 1842–July 13, 1924), born in Bermondsey, London, England, became one of the most influential economists of his time. ... {{Infobox_Biography subject_name = David Ricardo | image_name = David_ricardo. ...

Theory of utility

Jevons arrived quite early in his career at the doctrines that constituted his most characteristic and original contributions to economics and logic. The theory of utility, which became the keynote of his general theory of political economy, was practically formulated in a letter written in 1860; and the germ of his logical principles of the substitution of similars may be found in the view which he propounded in another letter written in 1861, that "philosophy would be found to consist solely in pointing out the likeness of things." The theory of utility above referred to, namely, that the degree of utility of a commodity is some continuous mathematical function of the quantity of the commodity available, together with the implied doctrine that economics is essentially a mathematical science, took more definite form in a paper on "A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy," written for the British Association in 1862. This paper does not appear to have attracted much attention either in 1862 or on its publication four years later in the Journal of the Statistical Society; and it was not till 1871, when the Theory of Political Economy appeared, that Jevons set forth his doctrines in a fully developed form. In economics, utility is a measure of the happiness or satisfaction gained consuming good and services. ...

It was not till after the publication of this work that Jevons became acquainted with the applications of mathematics to political economy made by earlier writers, notably Antoine Augustin Cournot and HH Gossen. The theory of utility was at about 1870 being independently developed on somewhat similar lines by Carl Menger in Austria and Leon Walras in Switzerland. As regards the discovery of the connection between value in exchange and final (or marginal) utility, the priority belongs to Gossen, but this in no way detracts from the great importance of the service which Jevons rendered to English economics by his fresh discovery of the principle, and by the way in which he ultimately forced it into notice. In his reaction from the prevailing view he sometimes expressed himself without due qualification: the declaration, for instance, made at the commencement of the Theory of Political Economy, that value depends entirely upon utility, lent itself to misinterpretation. But a certain exaggeration of emphasis may be pardoned in a writer seeking to attract the attention of an indifferent public. The Neoclassical Revolution which would reshape economics had been started. Antoine Augustin Cournot (28 August 1801‑ 31 March 1877) was a French philosopher and mathematician. ... Hermann Heinrich Gossen (September 7, 1810 in Düren - February 13, 1858 in Cologne) was a Prussian economist. ... Austrian School economist Carl Menger Carl Menger Carl Menger (February 28, 1840 – February 26, 1921) was the founder of the Austrian School of economics. ... Marie-Ésprit-Léon Walras (December 16, 1834 in Évreux, France - January 5, 1910 in Clarens, near Montreux, Switzerland) was a French economist, considered by Joseph Schumpeter as the greatest of all economists. He was a mathematical economist associated with the creation of the general equilibrium theory. ... In economics, the Neoclassical Revolution was the emergence of marginal theory of value as the central explanation for explaining the origin of value. ...

It should also be noted that Jevons did not explicitly distinguish between the concepts of ordinal and cardinal utility. Cardinal utility implies that each utility from each good can be measured as exactly as weight could. While ordinal utility implies that the utility of a particular can be compared to the utility of another and ranked according to which good provided the most utility. Although Jevons never explicitly makes the distinction it is obvious that he preferred the concept of an ordinal utility. Cardinal utility theory states that the utility (satisfaction) gained from a particular good or service can be measured in the same way as distance, temperature and time can. ... Ordinal utility theory states that while the utility of a particular good and service cannot be measured using an objective scale; a consumer is capable of ranking different alternatives available. ...

The Coal Question

It was not, however, as a theorist dealing with the fundamental data of economic science, but as a brilliant writer on practical economic questions, that Jevons first received general recognition. A Serious Fall in the Value of Gold (1863) and The Coal Question (1865) placed him in the front rank as a writer on applied economics and statistics; and he would be remembered as one of the leading economists of the 19th century even had his Theory of Political Economy never been written. Amongst his economic works may be mentioned Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (1875), written in a popular style, and descriptive rather than theoretical, but wonderfully fresh and original in treatment and full of suggestiveness, a Primer on Political Economy (1878), The State in Relation to Labour (1882), and two works published after his death, namely, Methods of Social Reform and Investigations in Currency and Finance, containing papers that had appeared separately during his lifetime. The last-named volume contains Jevons's interesting speculations on the connexion between. commercial crises and sun-spots. He was engaged at the time of his death upon the preparation of a large treatise on economics and had drawn up a table of contents and completed some chapters and parts of chapters. This fragment was published in ?905 under the title of The Principles of Economics: a Fragment of a Treatise on the Industrial Mechanism of Society, and other Papers. Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Logic

Logic Piano

Jevons's work in logic went on pari passu with his work in political economy. In 1864 he published a small volume, entitled Pure Logic; or, the Logic of Quality apart from Quantity, which was based on Boole's system of logic, but freed from what he considered the false mathematical dress of that system. In the years immediately following he devoted considerable attention to the construction of a logical machine, exhibited before the Royal Society in 1870, by means of which the conclusion derivable from any given set of premisses could be mechanically obtained. In 1866 what he regarded as the great and universal principle of all reasoning dawned upon him; and in 1869 he published a sketch of this fundamental doctrine under the title of The Substitution of Similars. He expressed the principle in its simplest form as follows: "Whatever is true of a thing is true of its like," and he worked out in detail its various applications including the "Logic Piano", a mechanical computer he designed and had built in 1869. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1074x1667, 516 KB) Summary A photograph of the Logic Piano invented by William Stanley Jevons. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1074x1667, 516 KB) Summary A photograph of the Logic Piano invented by William Stanley Jevons. ... George Boole [], (November 2, 1815 Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England – December 8, 1864 Ballintemple, Cork City, Ireland) was a mathematician and philosopher. ... The premises of the Royal Society in London (first four properties only). ...

In the following year appeared the Elementary Lessons on Logic, which soon became the most widely read elementary textbook on logic in the English language. In the meantime he was engaged upon a much more important logical treatise, which appeared in 1874 under the title of The Principles of Science. In this work Jevons embodied the substance of his earlier works on pure logic and the substitution of similars; he also enunciated and developed the view that induction is simply an inverse employment of deduction; he treated in a luminous manner the general theory of probability, and the relation between probability and induction; and his knowledge of the various natural sciences enabled him throughout to relieve the abstract character of logical doctrine by concrete scientific illustrations, often worked out in great detail. Jevons's general theory of induction was a revival of the theory laid down by Whewell and criticized by Mill; but it was put in a new form, and was free from some of the non-essential adjuncts which rendered Whewell's exposition open to attack. The work as a whole was one of the most notable contributions to logical doctrine that appeared in Britain in the 19th century. His Studies in Deductive Logic, consisting mainly of exercises and problems for the use of students, was published in 1880. In 1877 and the following years Jevons contributed to the Contemporary Review some articles on JS Mill, which he had intended to supplement by further articles, and eventually publish in a volume as a criticism of Mill's philosophy. These articles and one other were republished after Jevons's death, together with his earlier logical treatises, in a volume, entitled Pure Logic, and other Minor Works. The criticisms on Mill contain much that is ingenious and much that is forcible, but on the whole they cannot be regarded as taking rank with Jevons's other work. His strength lay in his power as an original thinker rather than as a critic; and he will be remembered by his constrictive work as logician, economist and statistician. This article is about induction in philosophy and logic. ... Deductive reasoning is the process of reaching a conclusion that is guaranteed to follow, if the evidence provided is true and the reasoning used to reach the conclusion is correct. ... The word probability derives from the Latin probare (to prove, or to test). ... William Whewell William Whewell (May 24, 1794 – March 6, 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian and historian of science. ... John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806 – May 8, 1873), an English philosopher and political economist, was an influential classical liberal thinker of the 19th century. ... For Wikipedia statistics, see m:Statistics Statistics is the science and practice of developing human knowledge through the use of empirical data expressed in quantitative form. ...

On Jevons as logician, see Grattan-Guinness (2000).

Further reading

• Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons, edited by his wife (1886). This work contains a bibliography of Jevons's writings.

Credits

• The first part of this article was based on an article in the Encyclopedia of Marxism at www.marxists.org.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940. Princeton University Press.

Encyclopædia Britannica, the 11th edition The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is perhaps the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... Ivor Grattan-Guiness is a prolific contemporary historian of mathematics and logic. ...

See also

• Marshall Jevons, a pseudonym partly derived from Jevons's name

Marshall Jevons is the name of a ficticious writer invented by William Breit and Kenneth G. Elzinga, professors of economics at Trinity University and the University of Virginia, respectively. ... A pseudonym (Greek: false name) is a fictitious name used by an individual as an alternative to his or her legal name. ...

External links

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson. William Stanley Jevons at the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
• New School: William Stanley Jevons
• Royal Society certificate of election 1872
• Jevons and the Logic 'Piano' at The Rutherford Journal

Some of Jevons's works are available on the Library of Economics and Liberty website The MacTutor history of mathematics archive is a website hosted by University of St Andrews in Scotland. ...

• The Coal Question
• The Theory of Political Economy
• Money and the Mechanism of Exchange
• Richard Cantillon and the Nationality of Political Economy

and a few more on the Archive for the History of Economic Thought website

• William Stanley Jevons