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William Stanley Jevons

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William Stanley Jevons

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English economist and logician

Person · Open Library

Born
1835
Died
1882
Works
160

Top works

  • The silver question
  • Political economy
  • 經濟學理論
  • The elements of logic
  • Elementary Lessons in Logic

via Open Library + Wikidata

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
2
Total plays
2

Tags

logicMathematicseconomics

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via Last.fm · William Stanley Jevons

Quotes

  • When quite young I can remember I had no thought or wish of surpassing others. I was rather taken with a liking of little arts and bits of learning. My mother carefully fostered a liking for botany, giving me a small microscope and many books, which I yet have. Strange as it may seem, I now believe that botany and the natural system, by exercising discrimination of kinds, is the best of logical exercises. What I may do in logic is perhaps derived from that early attention to botany.
  • I used to think I should like to be a bookbinder or bookseller it seemed to me a most delightful trade and I wished or thought of nothing better. More lately I thought I should be a minister, it seemed so serious and useful a profession, and I entered but little into the merits of religion and the duties of a minister. Every one dissuaded me from the notion, and before I arrived at any age to require a real decision, science had claimed me.
  • I need hardly stay to demonstrate that facts are valueless unless connected and explained by a correct theory; that analogies are very dangerous grounds of inference, unless carefully founded on similar conditions; and that experience misleads if it be misinterpreted.
  • Coal in truth stands not beside, but entirely above, all other commodities. It is the material source of the energy of the country—the universal aid—the factor in everything we do. With coal almost any feat is possible or easy; without it we are thrown back into the laborious poverty of earlier times.
  • It is very commonly urged, that the failing supply of coal will be met by new modes of using it efficiently and economically. ...It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.
  • Commerce is but a means to an end, the diffusion of civilization and wealth. To allow commerce to proceed until the source of civilization is weakened and overturned is like killing the goose to get the golden egg. Is the immediate creation of material wealth to be our only object?

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Key facts

Born
( 1835-09-01 ) 1 September 1835, Liverpool , Lancashire , England
Died
13 August 1882 (1882-08-13) (aged 46), Bexhill-on-Sea , Sussex , England
Resting place
Hampstead Cemetery , London
Alma mater
University College London
Known for
Marginal utility theory , Jevons paradox
Children
Herbert Stanley Jevons
Fields
Economics , Logic
Institutions
University College London (1876–1880), Owens College (now University of Manchester ) (1863–1875)
Academic advisors
Augustus De Morgan

via Wikipedia infobox

Works in European collections

10 objects attributed to William Stanley Jevons, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

~26 min read

Encyclopedic overview

William Stanley Jevons FRS (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; 1 September 1835 – 13 August 1882) was an English economist and logician.

Irving Fisher described Jevons's book The Theory of Political Economy (1871) as the start of the mathematical method in economics. It made the case that economics, as a science concerned with quantities, is necessarily mathematical. In so doing, it expounded upon 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. Jevons's contribution to the marginal revolution in economics in the late 19th century established his reputation as a leading political economist and logician of the time.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “William Stanley Jevons” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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