- 著者
-
久保 真
- 出版者
- The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought
- 雑誌
- 経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.48, no.2, pp.67-83, 2006-12-20 (Released:2010-08-05)
- 参考文献数
- 98
This article is a survey of recent studies concerning W. Whewell, R. Jones, C. Babbage, and others in the Cambridge network. These were the Cantabrigians who launched the methodological attack on Ricardian, or orthodox, political economy, and historians of economics have lumped them together as the Cambridge inductivist group. Work in the history of science, however, has long established that the members of this “group” were by no means in full accord regarding methodology. Whewell, in fact, the pivotal figure in the network, did not follow an inductivist approach in his scientific methodology. Recently scholars have begun to recognize that each of the several methodological approaches represented in the group deserves its own distinct place in the history of economics.Why did the Cantabrigians join forces to undermine orthodoxy and attempt to form an alliance with Malthus, even though their methodological views were, to one degree or another, at variance? Various explanations have been proposed, and although there is still no consensus on the answer, the dispute itself is proving to be productive, perhaps more so than the arguments centering on the methodology.While their attacks on classical orthodoxy have been studied in some detail, the kind of economics the Cantabrigians taught and were taught have received less attention from researchers. It has been often assumed, for example, that Pryme, the first professor of the subject at the university, was a minor follower of Whewell. Recent findings, however, suggest that he was primarily a disciple of orthodoxy, and possibly an adversary of Whewell, Jones, and Babbage, all of whom had visions of the coming industrial society as technology-driven and class-harmonious.Some recent studies indicate that the anti-Ricardian academics not only had lasting influence on the university (in spite of Pryme) and the East India College, but also upon newly established societies for economic research. A more complete understanding of their influence will shed new light upon what is called the Decline of Ricardian Economics and the emergence of Jevonsian and Marshallian economics.