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I've transcribed the technical footnote to S.J. Chapman's "Hours of Labour" 
(Economic Journal, Sept. 1909) and posted it on the web at:  
 
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/chapman.htm  
 
I've also broken down the cluttered explanatory figure Chapman presented in 
the footnote into four colourful, step-by-step graphs. 
 
Until sometime in the 1930's, Chapman's analysis was considered the 
"classical statement on the theory of 'hours' in a free market" (J.R. Hicks, 
1932). Then it virtually 'disappeared' from the discourse of economics. 
 
Several weeks ago (April 14), I queried the HES list about the disappearance 
of Chapman's theory -- "now you see it, now you don't" -- and received no 
response. Last week, I queried the HES list about another anomaly of 
economics scholarship, the lump-of-labour fallacy, and again received no 
response. 
 
It would seem to me that these two *aporias* (in Paul Ricoeur's sense, see 
_Time and Narrative_, vol. 1, especially pp. 7-22, 38-51) have disturbing 
implications for the historiography of economics. Could it be coincidence 
that these aporias in the discourse of economics have to do expressly with 
the experience of time? 
 
Ricoeur's "basic hypothesis" in _Time and Narrative_ was that "between the 
activity of narrating a story and the temporal character of human experience 
there exists a correlation that is not merely accidental but that presents a 
transcultural form of necessity. To put it another way, *time becomes human 
to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode, and narrative 
attains its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal existence.* 
[p. 52, emphasis in original]" 
 
My hypothesis is that Chapman's argument was/is and always will be 
unassimilable to the neo-classical synthesis precisely because it narrates 
the temporal character of human experience, a *necessity* the neo-classical 
synthesis dreams of ignoring. Or, to put it bluntly, the neo-classical 
synthesis is patent Nonsense (with a philosophically capital "N"). 
 
regards, 
 
Tom Walker 
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm 
 
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