François Quesnay , born the June 4th 1694 with Mother and dead the December 16th 1774 with Versailles, is a Médecin and economist French, thinker of the king Louis XV and one of the founders of the first school in economy, the school of the Physiocrates. He is the author of the economic Tableau (1758) which is the first diagrammatic representation of the economy.

Biography

His/her father is a land small holder (and not a lawyer like claimed it a tough legend). He has thirteen brothers and sisters. At eleven years, it cannot still read. It then will learn with its gardener, which will develop at his place a taste for medicine and the “  rural administration  ”. In 1711, he learns then Latin and the Greek with the priest from his village.

The surgeon

At thirteen years, it is found orphan of father and decides to be devoted to the surgery. He studies the Médecine and becomes, in 1718, main in the community of the surgeons of Paris. He begins his career with Mantes and becomes royal surgeon in 1723. In 1744, it obtains the title of doctor of medicine and becomes doctor of Madam de Pompadour in 1749. It returns to the Academy of Science in 1751 and becomes member of the Royal Society in 1752. Louis XV the anoblit the same year following the cure of the Dolphin of the small pox. Following this cure, it receives hands of the sovereign, who called it his “  thinker  ”, of the “  speaking armorial bearings  ”: three flowers of thoughts. Its first books relate primarily to medicine: Observations on the effects of the bleeding (1730), Test phisic on the animal œconomy (1736), Art to cure by the bleeding (1736), Treated suppuration (1749), Treated gangrene (1749), Treated continuous fevers (1753).

Late interest for the economy

Its relations, among which the academicians of Alembert and Buffon, the philosopher Diderot, accustomed of its mezzanine Helvétius and Condorcet, make him discover new centers of interests. After this brilliant career of doctor-surgeon who led it to the bedside of the king, Quesnay turns in years 1750 to the economy. It forms the school of the Physiocrats called " sect of the économistes" by its detractors, where join gradually Victor Riqueti de Mirabeau, the writer of the Éphémérides of the citizen , the abbot Nicolas Baudeau, the lawyer Guillaume-François Trosne, André Morellet, the intendant Mercier Lariviere and Pierre Samuel of the Bridge of Nemours. Its principal economic works are articles of the Encyclopedia: Farm (1756), Grains (1757), Men (1757); the books economic Table (1758); general Maxims of the economic government of an agricultural kingdom (1758); chapter VII of the rural Philosophy of Mirabeau; and of the articles published in the Newspaper of Agriculture, the Trade and Finance : natural right (1765), Dialog on the trade (1765) and Dialog on work of the craftsmen (1767).

Last years

The last years of his life, François Quesnay starts to study mathematics. His/her friend of Alembert speaks in these terms about this unhappy experiment: “  It had misfortune to find at the same time the trisection of the angle and the quadrature of the circle, and to show by raisonnemens metaphysics which paroissoient to him out of doubt, which the diagonal on the cut and its side are not incommensurable.  ” This failure late does not give however causes of it its reputation which it acquired young person in surgery and economy.

With died of Louis XV in May 1774, Quesnay must leave the Château of Versailles to settle with the Large Commun run. He dies on December 16th in Versailles.

Work

Quesnay makes appear its first economic writings in 1756-1757 in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and Alembert (the articles Fermiers and Grains ). The following year appears the first version of its famous economic Tableau , where it presents the natural order of the economy. The role of the economists is to reveal the natural laws. The economic laws function in the same way that the laws of physics.

This text represents the ideas of the Physiocrate S. the Tableau is inspired by the blood circulation at the man, on a model of flow, contreflux and of exchange.

It is the first to imagine the economy on a level Macroéconomique. The economic agents are not regarded as a sum of individual agents, as the classical theory recommends it (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill).

For this reason, i.e. by considering the economy in its globality and against the traditional postulate of methodological individualism, it is precursory thought of Karl Marx and Keynes, which will take again both the model of table.

Economic table

Quesnay makes publish the economic Tableau by the printing works lately installed with the castle of Versailles. On the whole, Quesnay will write three versions of them. The first edition goes back to November or December 1758. This first version of the “  zigzag  ” is based on an income of 400 pounds and comprised twenty-two Remarques . The 2nd edition, which dates from spring 1759, share of an income of 600 pounds and 23 remarks. The third edition, published in 1759, is also based on an income of 600 pounds and is followed of a “    explanation” of twelve pages and of a “  extracted  ” comprising twenty-four maxims.

Quesnay represents there the economy like a coherent field of systemic nature while taking as a starting point the discovery, carried out one century and half earlier by William Harvey, of the mechanism of small and the great blood circulation.

It divides the company into two sectors (agriculture and the remainder) and three classes on the basis of their report/ratio to the net profit: class productive, made up primarily of farmers, which is the only one with being able to provide a net profit, i.e. able to multiply products, class sterile, which is made up of all citizens occupied with other work that those of agriculture, able only to transform goods without to multiply them, and classifies it landowners, whose only function is to spend the share of the income which is due, without producing any good.

Quesnay connects the social classes by flows of matters and currency. The table which it prepares thus can be represented in a more modern way in the form of a circuit or of a table input-outputs of Leontief.

Quesnay shows how a first expenditure generates flows of production and expenditure and how these last finance, in their turn, the initial expenditure. The productive class uses primitive advances (capital agricultural resulting from the production of the sterile class and technical capital) which undergo a physical damping evaluated by Quesnay with 10% by the year, that is to say 1 billion per annum, which will require to reconstitute each year the primitive advance. The farmers also use their own products as an input (seeds, animal feed), which are evaluated by Quesnay to 2 billion. The harvest being of 5 billion, the net profit is of 2 billion. It is versed in the form of revenues with the landowners. The sterile class transforms the agricultural produce into manufactured goods for 1 billion and this twice a year. Lastly, the class of the landowners receives a revenue of an amount of 2 billion, which she spends with equal shares between the sterile class and the productive class.

The economic table describes a state dreamed of the economy. On this basis, year by year, the economy reproduces such as it. There is no more growth. Quesnay regards this situation as the best possible state for France.

The posterity of its work

The principal contribution of Quesnay is to have provided the foundations of this new discipline, the economy. After Quesnay, the economic reflection took its autonomy vis-a-vis theology and with the policies contrary to former work of the medieval time (for example, Thomas d' Aquin) or of the mercantilists.

Work of Quesnay will be resumed by many economists. The concept of interdependence of the economic activities will be found in work of Leon Walras. One will find the ideas of Quesnay in the general Théorie of Keynes. The economic Tableau of Quesnay can also be regarded as the precursor of table input-output ( table input-output ) of Leontief. The sterile and productive classes can indeed be comparable with sectors I and II of an economy, with for example, I agriculture and J industry. The annual advances of the productive class can be comparable with intermediate consumptions necessary to the agricultural production:

Publications

  • Observations on the effects of the bleeding, as well in the diseases within the competence of the medicine as of the surgery, founded on the loix of hidrostatic with critical remarks on the Treaty of the use of the various kinds of bleedings, Mr. de Silva (1730)
  • Art to cure by the bleeding, where one examines into same tems the other helps which must contribute with this remedy, or which must be to him preferred, in the cure of the diseases as well medicinal as surgical (1736)
  • Lettres on the arguments which rose between the doctors and the surgeons on right which has Mr. Astruc to enter these arguments, on the preference that it gives by comparing its work with that of Hery (1737)
  • critical and historical Recherches on the origin, the various states and progress of the surgery in France , collaboartion with François Bellial of the Virtues, (1749) Text in line
  • impartial Examen of the disputes of the doctors and the surgeons, considered compared to the public interest (1748)
  • Traité gangrene (1749)
  • Traité suppuration (1749)
  • Histoire of the origin and progress surgery in France , collaboartion with François Bellial of the Virtues, (1749) Text in line
  • Treated continuous fevers (1753)
  • Obviousness , volume VI of the Encyclopedia of Diderot and Alembert (1756) Text in Farm line
  • , volume VI of the Encyclopedia of Diderot and Alembert (1756) Text in line
  • Grains , volume VII of the Encyclopedia of Diderot and Alembert (1757) Text in line
  • general Maxims of the economic government of an agricultural kingdom (1758)
  • economic Table (1758) Text in line
  • “  Observations on the natural right of the men brought together in company  ” in Newspaper of agriculture (September 1756)
  • Test on the administration of the grounds (1759) Text in line
  • rural Philosophy, or General economy and policy of agriculture , by Victor Riqueti Put of Mirabeau and F. Quesnay (3 volumes, 1763)
  • Analysis the arithmetic formula (1766) Text in line
  • general Maxims of the agricultural government most advantageous at mankind (1768)
  • Physiocracy, or natural Constitution of the government most advantageous with mankind , collection published by Pierre-Samuel Dupont de Nemours (2 volumes, 1768-1769) Text in line
  • philosophical Research on the obviousness of the geometrical truths, with a project of new élémens of geometry (1773)
; Works joined together
  • economic and philosophical Works of F. Quesnay, accompanied by the biographical praises and other work on Quesnay by various authors published with an introduction and notes by Auguste Oncken (1888) Text in line
  • François Quesnay and physiocracy , foreword by Luigi Einaudi; presentation by Alfred Sauvy; introductory note with the reading of the comments by Louis Salleron, 2 volumes, National institute of demographic studies, Paris, 1958.
  • Physiocracy: right natural, economic table and other texts , edition established by Jean Cartelier, Flammarion, Paris, 1991.
  • Works economic complete and other texts , published by Christine Théré, Loïc Charles and Jean-Claude Perrot, 2 volumes, National institute of demographic studies, Paris, 2005.

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