William Stanley Jevons

William Stanley Jevons ( born September 1, 1835 in Liverpool, † August 13 1882 in Bexhill -on-Sea ) was an eminent English economist and philosopher. He is considered the Cambridge School of neoclassicism.

Life

Jevons was a grandson of the famous historian William Roscoe. He studied chemistry in London. After the bankruptcy of his father Jevons broke off his studies and went to Australia. He was from 1853 to 1858 Wardein (that is, he was responsible for testing the authenticity of the coins ) of the Australian coin in Sydney, before he returned to London and continued to study there. In 1864 he became a Fellow at the University, 1866 Professor at Owen 's College in Manchester, and in 1876 professor of economics at the University of London, which position he resigned early in 1881. At the age of almost 47 years, William Stanley Jevons was drowned while bathing in the sea near Hastings.

Thinking

Together with Léon Walras and Carl Menger, he discovered a solution to the classical value paradox. As it turned out later, however, Hermann Heinrich Gossen already had the problem solved.

As the first Jevons described the rebound effect, called Jevons ' paradox in the special case for him. Among the phenomenon is understood that technical improvements in energy and resource efficiency are "eaten " by an increased consumption again.

Jevons declared economic fluctuations with the sunspots ( sunspot theory). This, his imagination, were responsible for poor harvests.

Less well-known and little appreciated are Jevons ' contributions to the field of formal logic. As a practical result of which he developed in 1869 the first complex mechanical logical machine, which he presented to the Royal Society in 1870. This device is realized via buttons logical sentences can enter, for example, " All A are B" (see syllogism ). The machine considers the input sentences as premises and eliminated in a mechanical way, all combinations of terms that are not compatible with each premise. The remaining combinations can be read on a display.

Works

• The Coal Question ( 1865)
• Substitution of similars the true principle of reasoning (1869 )
• Theory of Political Economy (1871, 2nd edition 1879), in which he developed national economic theorems in mathematical form
• The principles of science: a treatise on logic and scientific method (1874, 2 vols, 2nd edition 1877), in which he views the Boole approaches
• Elementary lessons in logic ( 7th edition 1879)
• Money and the mechanism of exchange (1875, 4th edition 1878, German, Leipz 1876. )
• Studies in deductive logic (1880, 2nd edition 1884)
• The state in relation to labor (1882 )
• On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference ( Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Vol 160, 1870, pp. 497-518 )

After his death, have been published:

• Methods of social reform, and other papers (1883 )
• Investigations in currency and finance (1884 )
• Journals and letters (edited by his widow, 1886)