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Gregory Zorzos cited a lot of ancient sources for words related to  
economist; my own knowledge is much more limited and focused.  It  
seems to me that for Aristotle economics is the art of household  
management, which (for him) traditionally involved obtaining goods to  
satisfy the needs of the household; and which had, in the conditions of  
the developed Greek conditions in which he was writing, become more  
complex and differentiated such that some activities (like exchange)  
which had been originally used to satisfy neeeds were now being used  
by merchants and bankers as a means to make money.  (This is all  
from the Politics, Bk I .)   
 
So Aristotle had two senses of economics, from oikos, the art of  
household management.  His traditional (and 'natural') sense is what  
*we* now see as the old-fashioned one:  how to do home economics,  
how to manage the finances of the family, and is in many ways out- 
dated because family economics are not, as they frequently were (or  
could be considered) for Aristotle, relatively independent of a larger  
nexus of exchange, money supply, etc.:  a (rich) family unit could be  
relatively self-sufficient, for Aristotle.   
 
His developed, 'unnatural' money-making trade and usury, where  
individuals exchange goods and loan money in the hopes of making  
more money, is, rather, what modern (capitalist) economics is about.   
Aristotle saw and recognized this, saw that it could become  
independent of the political order and could corrupt people from their  
proper citizen concerns, and saw, implicitly (or from the perspective of  
2000), that this kind of trade and usury could gain dominance in social  
life.   
 
Personally, I find a lot of what Aristotle says to be quite intelligent, 
and,  
as Ross Emmett suggests, to be common usage.  Aristotle moralizes  
(as I imply above), but Aristotle's main distinction has to do with  
whether 'economic' activity is to satisfy human needs or to make  
money, and Aristotle also looks to the human or psychological  
implications and results of economic arrangements where the goal of  
people is to make money:  the pursuit of money is unlimited (whereas  
need satisfaction, in Aristotle's non-capitalist world, has limits), it  
detaches people from concern for human needs, it detaches people  
from loyalty to family and state, etc.   
 
(Marx, in Capital vol. I ch. 1, picks up on a lot of what Aristotle says,  
beginning with Aristotle's distinction of use from exchange value.  For  
Marx, Aristotle is in the end a kind of reactionary, objecting to  
unnatural exchange and trying to turn back the clock to a previous  
stage of economic (under-)development; whereas Marx thinks that  
exchange aimed at money-making can be eliminated only by going  
beyond capitalism.)   
 
To pick up on another strand, if you take an Aristotelean approach to  
defining (modern) economics, it is the study of exchange and loans that  
aims at money making.   
 
Peter G. Stillman 
 
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