William Stanley Jevons

William Stanley Jevons (born on September 1st, 1835, dead on August 13rd, 1882) is a economist and a Logicien English, considered as cofounder of the neo-classic school and the “revolution marginalist”, with Leon Walras and Carl Menger. Among the other principal economists belonging to the current marginalist one can quote: Vilfredo Pareto, Irving Fisher and Francis Ysidro Edgeworth

  • the “revolution marginalist” is based on the appearance of new concepts such as that of marginal Utilité. This one increases as the quantity available of a good decreases. In other words, more the good is rare, more its marginal utility is large. Example: water does not have a great marginal utility on the other hand whereas its utility is large, a diamond, whose utility is very reduced, will have a great marginal utility.

Two other important points of the work of Jevons are to be underlined.

  • For Jevons it is important to leave the facts. Its reputation of economist initially came from the book the Coal Question (1865) based on data. This method is clarified in the Treatise one Logic and Scientific Method and differentiates it from Leon Walras which is more hypothético-deductive

  • Against the Traditional ones which adopted a synthetic approach, Jevons is in favor of a specialization of the economists in various the field which this discipline

recovers

Biographical elements

It was born with Liverpool where his/her father was commercial in the sector of the metallurgy. At fifteen years, it is sent to the Junior School of the University College of London where it is interested particularly in botany and chemistry. The financial troubles of the family related to the bankruptcy of the company of his/her father in 1847, pushes it to accept a station in Australia where a new institute of monetary striking was established following the discovery of gold mines in Australia. During its stay in Australia, it is interested in the debate on the railroads and starts to be interested in the economy by reading the Richesse of the nations of Adam Smith, the Principes of political economy of John Stuart Mill and the Introductory Lectures off Political economy of Richard Whately. At the beginning of 1857 the reading of the book of Dionysius Lardner Railway Economy (1850) and of that of Adolphe Quetelet Treatise one Man the conduit, like it writes it in a letter with Henrietta Jevons, to think that “the man must be a creature of cause and effect” and that “the perfect consideration of all the data, in fact of all the operative causes must lead to the determination of all the effects”.

In October 1859, it turns over to England and resumes its studies in University College where it obtains its Master off Arts . In 1863, it enters the teaching body of Owens college . In 1865, its book The coal question, established its reputation as treating economist of the facts. In 1866, he becomes Professor de Logique and of Moral and Mental Philosophy then Cobden Professor of economy political. He Marie in 1867, with the girl of the owner of the Manchester Guardian and is elected in 1872 with Royal the society. Patient, it resigns of Owens college in 1876 to accept a lighter teaching with the University college. In 1880, it leaves this establishment to devote its energy declining to research. He dies in 1882.

The Coal Question (1865) and the paradox of Jevons

See also: Paradox of Jevons

The Common (British Parliament) being worried, at the time of the debate at the time of the Franco-British treaty called “Knight-Cobden” of 1860, on the threat which could make weigh on English industrial supremacy the exhaustion of its coal reserves, Jevons decided to study the question. For him, the rise of the coal consumption, if it were maintained, was likely to lead to a rise of the prices because it would be necessary to put in exploitation mines whose costs of exploitation would be higher. In addition it underlined, it is what one calls the paradox of Jevons, that the fact of using of the machines less consuming energy does not bring to a fall of consumption but involves on the contrary the use of more than machines which counterbalance energy saving. Jevons was rather pessimistic on the way of doing vis-a-vis this problem because he was skeptic on the possibility of finding alternative energies. Its only positive suggestion was to reduce the national debt to face the future problems. This proposal was taken again by Gladstone, then Minister for Finance.

The revolution marginalist and The theory off Political Economy

The book Theory off Political Economy was published the same year that the book of Menger and three years before the Éléments of pure political economy of Leon Walras.

In opposition with David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, he thinks that the value depends entirely on the utility. Dice its Brief account off Mathematical Theory , written in 1862 and presented to the section F of British Association for the advancement off Science (BAATH), recognizes that if the pleasures and the sorrows are the large engines of the human action, it is not only and that the other reasons will have to be treated in other disciplines. By doing this, it is placed explicitly in the line of Jeremy Bentham. For him the utility, like the value, is not intrinsic but depends on the needs for the individuals.

Logic

Jevons worked on logic in parallel with its research in economy. In 1863, it published a small volume entitled Pure Logic gold the Logic off Quality apart from Quantity , based on the logical of Boole to which it removed what it regarded as a false mathematical preparing. In the years which followed, it stuck to the construction of a logical machine, called Logic Piano , which it presented to the Royal Society in 1870. This machine made it possible to arrive mechanically at the conclusions induced by a set of premises. This machine rises from what he regarded as the “large one and universal principle of any reasoning” that he off exposed in 1869 under the title The Substitution Similars . The idea is that as in the equations of Algèbre, it is possible in the problems of logic to substitute for a statement an element equipped with the same properties.

In the years which followed, it revealed to its Elementary Lessons one Logic which became soon the text élemtaire of logic in English language more read. In a more ambitious text published in 1874, under the title The Principle off Science , it states and develops the idea that induction is simply the reverse of the deduction. However as it is difficult to take account of all the possible causes, Jevons from of deduced that the general laws are as well as possible only probable. For him, the probabilities are used to measure rational hopes ( rational expectation ).

Stanley Jevons versus John Stuart Mill

For Sandra Peart, Stanley Jevons and John Stuart Mill could still contribute to also inform the contemporary debates on the “social wellbeing” seeks what brings and moves away one closer to the other these two economists. Both sought to define and to measure the “larger good” but Mill was stopped by the difficulty in reconciling the various pleasures to make a whole of it because he considered that the pleasures were not qualitatively equal. These difficulties led it to resort to qualified judges to evaluate the quality of the pleasures. But by doing this for Jevons, Mill moved away from Jeremy Bentham which trusted more the individual judgment based on the quantity of pleasures. For Peart, Jevons is thus more individualistic (perhaps also more democratic) insofar as it leaves in the economic policies more a big leeway to the individuals that Mill. If both fall under the tradition benthamienne of program of social reform granting a great role to the freedom - included/understood within the meaning of independence economic and intellectual, Jevons thinks that the human nature is less malleable than Mill believes it what makes it careful in its recommendations of economic policy.

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