------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (June 2006)
Richard van den Berg, editor, _At the Origins of Mathematical
Economics: The Economics of A. N. Isnard (1748-1803)_. New York:
Routledge, 2005. xvii + 461 pp. $115 (cloth), ISBN: 0-415-30649-3.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Theodore M. Porter, Department of History, UCLA.
This volume consists primarily of selections from the works of the
French engineer and economist A. N. Isnard. Almost unknown in his own
time, Isnard acquired a modest reputation retrospectively as a
pioneer of mathematical economics. He was admired especially by Leon
Walras, and William Jaffe attached great importance to Isnard's
_Traite des richesses_ as source for the mathematical framework of
Walras's theory of general equilibrium. Van den Berg, a lecturer at
Kingston University in the U.K., helps to situate Isnard in relation
to the economic thought of his own time and place, in critical
engagement with such authors as Turgot, Rousseau, and, above all,
Quesnay. However, Van den Berg invokes the modern style of economics
as the reason to look back to Isnard, who stands justified before
history as an avatar of mathematical economics, a precursor.
Isnard's best-known work is the _Traite des Richesses_ (_Treatise on
Wealth_), printed in 1781 at the author's expense, and now rare. Van
den Berg here exhumes Isnard's other economic writings, many of them
virtually unknown in our day and perhaps even in his. We have in this
book only a fraction of Isnard's writings; a complete edition would
have run to several volumes. Anyone doing serious research on Isnard
would have to consult the works in their entirety. Nevertheless, van
den Berg has made a good choice, performing his most valuable service
by bringing to the attention of economists and historians Isnard's
lesser-known writings. These include the _Social Catechism_ (1784),
which defends human dignity and responsibility against radicals such
as La Mettrie and the Baron d'Holbach, while at the same time
presenting economic motives as properly linked to moral behavior and
to sociability. There are some policy pieces from the years of the
French Revolution, including, in March of 1789, a defense of a
"single tax" on net revenues of agriculture, industry, and commerce
(and not alone, as the physiocrats recommended, on land), and another
piece on taxation in 1791. Perhaps the most interesting is his
"Reflections on the issue of the assignats" (1790), where he
addresses in a general way the advantages and dangers of paper money,
with clear reference to issues of immediate importance. Isnard
rejected any simple quantity theory, as for example that any issuance
of paper money leads inevitably to a proportionate inflation of the
currency. He was especially concerned with questions of trust: the
state should introduce assignats slowly and responsibly so that the
public will not lose confidence in them. But cautious moderation was
not the way of the Revolution, and Isnard's worst fears were soon
realized.
What does this book tell us about the sources and the character of
Isnard's economic mathematics? Anglophone as well as francophone
scholars now know that French engineering corps -- such as Ponts et
Chauss�es (responsible for transportation networks) and Mines --
cultivated, in the nineteenth century and beyond, a quantitative form
of economics linked to the administrative and political challenges
faced by these powerful state agencies. Several of these engineers,
preeminently Jules Dupuit, pursued the economic aspect of these
problems well beyond the demands of immediate practicality. Walras's
links to this tradition are also of interest, since he studied as an
external student (i.e. he was not destined for service in the state
corps) in the School of Mines. However, he chose not to take up the
characteristic problems of French engineering economics such as
working out a basis for deciding what transportation projects were
economically justified and establishing a rational basis for the
tolls.
I began with hopes that this volume might reveal interconnections
between engineering and economic quantification from before the
French Revolution. Van den Berg presents new research in the archives
of the Corps des Ponts et Chauss�es, the Archives Nationales, and
French regional archives in the Department of the Rhone to
reconstruct the trajectory of Isnard's career as a Ponts engineer.
But the excerpted writings, at least, do not address the economics of
public works, and the titles of Isnard's engineering writings refer
to arches and locks, with no indication that economics is at issue.
Van den Berg is reticent on the connections, if any. He refers often
to Isnard as "the engineer," seeming to imply that his profession was
relevant for his economics. For example: "The engineer's views on
taxation are a consistent development of the central notions of his
economic theory" (p. 41); "The surprising _Cath�chisme social_ ...
must be considered as developing parts of the engineer's 'science of
man'" (p. 51). But no link is shown between his profession and his
economic beliefs or style.
Van den Berg may well suppose that engineers can be expected to rely
on mathematics in a way that literary economists would not. However,
he does not attend to the history of engineering, and for example
Antoine Picon's authoritative _L'Invention de l'ing�nieur moderne:
L'Ecole des Ponts et Chauss�es, 1747-1851_ is missing from his
bibliography, as is the extensive scholarship on French mathematics
(and sometimes also on economics) by Ivor Grattan-Guinness. One
readily learns from research in the history of mathematics, science,
and technology that the creation of the Ecole Polytechnique in the
mid-1790s was of huge importance for the formation of engineers. The
new polytechnic school, with its highly elitist patterns of
recruitment and curricular preoccupation with mathematics, created a
new sort of engineer, a type that would be rare outside of France
until the mid-nineteenth century. Eighteenth-century French
engineering used mathematics in a more sparing and more immediately
practical way, and it would be interesting to compare Isnard's
economic quantification with contemporary engineering. For a
historian, the question is not only whether mathematics was applied
to economics, but also what sort of mathematics and how it was used.
It is necessary, then, to examine the role (and not merely to note
the presence) of mathematics in Isnard's economic writings. My
impression is that his mathematics is often not very hospitable to
what we might call an economic sensibility. Van den Berg refers (p.
34) to assumptions made for "mathematical convenience," assumptions
Isnard knew to be inaccurate. The formulation by Isnard that is
sometimes seen as a precursor of general equilibrium mathematics
treats the economy as a bookkeeper might. Costs of production, and
hence values, are fixed. Economic actors divide their wares into what
they need for themselves and what they will offer in trade, rather
than letting this division be a function of the price structure. His
solutions are reached arithmetically, with perhaps a rudimentary
element of algebra. This is the sort of conception that economists
nowadays sometimes associate with engineers, though it is far from
clear to me that any of Isnard's contemporaries thought of the
economy this way. In his essay on paper money (assignats), Isnard
rejects these radical simplifications. A doubling of the quantity of
metal, he says, will not necessarily double the value of wheat in the
currency of metal. Instead, a "new order" will establish itself "in
offers and bids," a "new order on which the change in value depends"
(p. 296).
Van den Berg's translations are fairly clear and free of
anachronistic terms and concepts. Although he relies often on
cognates when a different sort of word would be more accurate (for
example, he renders _confiance_ too often as "confidence" rather than
as "trust"), the volume is a real translation, whose phraseology is
almost always idiomatic, if not arresting. It is convenient to have
the French on facing pages for comparison. This is, in short, a
useful introduction to a mostly unsung economist, and on an
appropriate scale. I don't know how much more singing about Isnard is
required.
Theodore M. Porter teaches history of science in the Department of
History, UCLA. His books include _Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of
Objectivity in Science and Public Life_; _Karl Pearson: The
Scientific Life in a Statistical Age_; and (co-edited with Dorothy
Ross), _The Cambridge History of Science, Volume VII: Modern Social
Sciences_.
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