Jevons and Mill

Theory, Application and the canon: The case of Mill and Jevons

The Jevons Paradox

Here I draw attention to two socio-ecological paradoxes. The Jevons Paradox is based on the observation that an improvement in the efficiency with which a natural resource is used is often associated with an increase in the consumption of that resource. Similarly, the Paperless Office Paradox is based on the observation that the development of substitutes for a natural resource is not always as...

William Stanley Jevons and the Extent of Meaning in Logic and Economics

This paper shows that William Stanley Jevons was not precursor of logical positivism despite his attempt to build up a unified science. His mechanical reductionism was directed towards this project, and Jevons tried to found mathematics on logic through the development of a theory of number. We show that his attempts are unsuccessful, and that his errors remain visible within the totality of hi...

Finite State Evaluation of Logical Formulas : Jevons' Approach (1870) and Contemporary Description

In this paper, we describe a formal language for a class of logical expressions. We then present a Finite State Machine for recognition and evaluation of this language. The main interest of the language is its historical characteristic. This language invented by the British scholar W. Stanley JEVONS in 1865 is probably the earliest language in which expressions were evaluated by a Finite State ...

The Law of Indi¤erence, Equilibrium, and Equilibration in Jevons, Walras, Edgeworth, and Negishi

In the glorious decade running from 1871 to 1881, Jevons, Walras, and Edgeworth laid the foundations of most modern microeconomic analysis: in his Theory of Political Economy (1 edition 1871, 2 edition 1879; henceforth TPE ), not only did Jevons formalise for the …rst time, by means of his celebrated "equations of exchange", the conditions de…ning the equilibrium of a pure-exchange two-commodit...