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JEVONS, WILLIAM STANLEY (1835-1882)

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Originally appearing in Volume V15, Page 362 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JEVONS, See also:WILLIAM See also:STANLEY (1835-1882) , See also:English economist and logician, was See also:born at See also:Liverpool on the 1st of See also:September 1835. His See also:father, See also:Thomas Jevons, a See also:man of strong scientific tastes and a writer on legal and economic subjects, was an See also:iron See also:merchant. His See also:mother was the daughter of William See also:Roscoe. At the See also:age of fifteen he was sent to See also:London to attend University See also:College school. He appears at this See also:time to have already formed the belief that important achievements as a thinker were possible to him, and at more than one See also:critical See also:period in his career this belief was the decisive See also:factor in determining his conduct. To-wards the end of 1853, after having spent two years at University College, where his favourite subjects were See also:chemistry and See also:botany, he unexpectedly received the offer of the assayership to the new See also:mint in See also:Australia. The See also:idea of leaving See also:England was distasteful, but pecuniary considerations had, in consequence of the failure of his father's See also:firm in 1847, become of vital importance, and he accepted the See also:post. He See also:left England for See also:Sydney in See also:June 1854, and remained there for five years. At the end of that period he resigned his See also: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 See also:principal See also:attention to the moral sciences, but his See also:interest in natural See also:science was by no means exhausted: throughout his See also:life he continued to write occasional papers on scientific subjects, and his intimate knowledge of the See also:physical sciences greatly contributed to the success of his See also:chief logical See also:work, The Principles of Science. Not See also:long after taking his M. A. degree Jevons obtained a post as See also:tutor at See also:Owens College, See also:Manchester.

In 1866 he was elected See also:

professor of See also:logic and See also:mental and moral See also:philosophy and See also:Cobden professor of See also:political See also:economy in Owens college. Next See also:year he married Harriet See also:Ann See also:Taylor, whose father had been the founder and proprietor of the Manchester See also:Guardian. Jevons suffered a See also:good See also:deal from See also:ill See also:health and sleeplessness, and found the delivery of lectures covering so wide a range of subjects very burdensome. In 1876 he was glad to See also:exchange the Owens professorship for the professorship of political economy in University College, London. Travelling and See also:music were the principal recreations of his life; but his health continued See also:bad, and he suffered from depression. He found his professorial duties increasingly irksome, and feeling that the pressure of See also:literary work left him no spare See also:energy, he decided in 188o to resign the post. On the 13th of See also:August 1882 he was drowned whilst bathing near See also:Hastings. Throughout his life he had pursued with devotion and See also:industry the ideals with which he had set out, and his See also:journal and letters display a See also:noble simplicity of disposition and an unswerving honesty of purpose. He was a prolific writer, and at the time of his See also:death he occupied the foremost position in England both as a logician and as an economist. Professor See also:Marshall has said of his work in See also:economics that it " will probably be found to have more constructive force than any, See also:save that of See also:Ricardo, that has been done during the last See also: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 See also:accident by which his life was prematurely cut`See also:short. Jevons arrived quite See also:early in his career at the doctrines that constituted his most characteristic and See also:original contributions to economics and logic.

The theory of utility, which became the keynote of his See also:

general theory of political economy, was practically formulated in a See also:letter written in 186o; 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 See also:function of the quantity of the com-modity available, together with the implied See also:doctrine that economics is essentially a mathematical science, took more definite See also:form in a See also:paper on " A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy," written for the See also: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 See also:developed form. It was not till after the publication of this work that Jevons became acquainted with the applications of See also:mathematics to political economy made by earlier writers, notably See also:Antoine Augustin See also:Cournot and H. H. Gossen. The theory of utility was about 187o being independently developed on somewhat similar lines by Carl Menger in See also:Austria and M.E.L. See also:Walras in See also:Switzerland. As regards the See also:discovery of the connexion between value in exchange and final (or marginal) utility, the priority belongs to Gossen, but this in no way detracts from the See also: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 See also:notice. In his reaction from the prevailing. view he sometimes expressed himself without due qualification: the See also:declaration, for instance, made at the commencement of the Theory of Political Economy, that " value depends entirely upon utility," See also:lent itself to misinterpretation. But a certain exaggeration of emphasis may be pardoned in a writer seeking to attract the attention of an in-different public. It was not, however, as a theorist dealing with the fundamental data of economic science, but as a brilliant writer on See also:practical economic questions, that Jevons first received general recognition. A Serious Fall in the Value of See also:Gold (1863) and The See also:Coal Question (1865) placed him in the front See also:rank as a writer on applied economics and See also:statistics; and he would be remembered as one of the leading economists of the 19th See also:century even had his Theory of Political Economy never been written.

Amongst his economic See also:

works may be mentioned See also:Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (1875), written in a popular See also:style, and descriptive rather than theoretical, but wonderfully fresh and original in treatment and full of suggestiveness, a Primer on Political Economy (1878), The See also:State in Relation to Labour (1882), and two works published after his death, namely, Methods of Social Reform and Investigations in Currency and See also:Finance, containing papers that had appeared separately during his lifetime. The last-named See also:volume contains Jevons's interesting speculations on the connexion between commercial crises and See also:sun-spots. He was engaged at the time of his death upon the preparation of a large See also:treatise on economics and had See also:drawn up a table of contents and completed some chapters and parts of chapters. This fragment was published in 1905 under the See also:title of The Principles of Economics: a Fragment of a Treatise on the See also:Industrial Mechanism of Society, and other Papers. 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 See also:Boole's See also:system of logic, but freed from what he considered the false mathematical See also:dress of that system. In the years immediately following he devoted considerable attention to the construction of a logical See also:machine, exhibited before the Royal Society in 187o, 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 See also: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. In the following year appeared the Elementary Lessons on Logic, which soon became the most widely read elementary textbook on logic in the English See also: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 See also:induction is simply an inverse employment of See also:deduction; he treated in a luminous manner the general theory of See also:probability, and the relation between probability and induction; and his knowledge of the various natural sciences enabled him throughout to relieve the abstract See also:character of logical doctrine by See also:concrete scientific illustrations, often worked out in great detail.

Jevons's general theory of induction was a revival of the theory laid down by See also:

Whewell and criticized by See also:Mill; but it was put in a new form, and was See also: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 Great See also:Britain in the 19th century. His Studies in Deductive Logic, consisting mainly of exercises and problems for the use of students, was published in r880. In 1877 and the following years Jevons contributed to the Contemporary See also:Review some articles on J. S. Mill, which he had intended to supplement by further articles, and eventually publish in a volume as a See also:criticism of Mill's philosophy. These articles and one other were republished after Jevons's death, together with his earlier logical See also:treatises, in a volume, entitled Pure Logic, and other See also:Minor TForks. 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 See also:lay in his See also:power as an original thinker rather than as a critic; and he will be remembered by his constructive work as logician, economist and statistician. See Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons, edited by his wife (1886). This work contains a bibliography of Jevons's writings.

See also LOGIC: See also:

History. (J. N.

End of Article: JEVONS, WILLIAM STANLEY (1835-1882)

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