John Womack, July 9, overlooks one point, and misrenders another.  
  
        1. This thread began when someone innocently asked when the term  
"factor of production" originated. That was and is the point of the thread;  
participants have tried to help.  Along the way they have turned up other  
interesting points.  
        2. John writes that others are thinking "as if this word "factor"  
were something like the last word (or concept) in the science".  That is a  
straw man, somewhat demeaning, and not applicable.  
  
        It has been an interesting and instructive hunt, IMHO.  Yes, a rose  
by any other name would smell as sweet, but the history of the naming of  
this particular rose, or collection of roses, tells us a lot about how  
people think, as some of the postings have brought out.  
  
        On the substantive matter, Ricardo and Malthus and Mill and Wicksell  
and Locke and Vanderlint and Quesnay et al. clearly thought in terms of  
factor proportions and their effects on distribution.   
  
        Seems to me there followed several steps in pulling away from their  
emphasis on factor proportions.  One was fuzzing together all inputs as  
"costs", and substituting increasing costs for diminishing returns.  A  
related change was changing the unit of analysis to "the firm" producing for  
a limited market.  Then came production possibilities frontiers and  
indifference curves for supply and demand curves - another step separating  
the analyst from the land, labor and capital at the base of the analysis.  
  
        Whether we call them inputs or factors, we should keep in mind their  
differences.  Words that help us do so are useful, and worth our time to  
discuss.  
  
Mason Gaffney