Guy Numa writes:

Pardon me if I sound harsh but I would like to
strongly defend Dupuit's contribution on the
diminishing marginal utility. (snip)

Thank you for this spirited and informative defense of Dupuit, but please
note that he was not under attack. I wrote:

	"Dan Bernoulli, Jules DuPuit and Hermann-Henri Gossen were brilliant
and insightful writers, I thoroughly agree, ..."

  And later,

	"... were they imprisoned in their mandatory pedantry so they could
not "formalize" what they could observe? That is not a rhetorical question -
if anyone knows the answer, please let us know!"

I repeat for emphasis: "That is not a rhetorical question - if anyone knows
the answer, please let us know!"

I confess that it could be read as presuming DuPuit might be guilty as
charged, and if so I apologize.  That was not my intent.  It was, rather, a
sincere request for help, which Guy Numa has now supplied.

The undertone of criticism was instead evoked by all the modern papers one
has to read that seem to sacrifice the substance of their subject to the
methodology, and seize on any data source just because it is available.

Mason Gaffney