Many thanks to everybody for the information. Michael, that was especially good information Marshall, who usually gets the praise or blame for the shift. I think the most salient line in the "science" debate is " Experience in controversies ... brings out the impossibility of learning anything from facts till they are examined and interpreted by reason; and teaches that the most reckless and treacherous of all theorists is he who professes to let facts and figures speak for themselves, who keeps in the background the part he has played, perhaps unconsciously, in selecting and grouping them, and in suggesting the argument post hoc ergo propter hoc. [Marshall 1885, pp. 167 68]" The pose of objectivity is always the first cover for ideology, as witness the experience of a certain "fair and balanced" news organization. It is interesting to know that Marshall himself had doubts about the project. Nicholas, The modern OED has, of course, an excellent entry on "economics," the original did not. The work on "E" was completed in 1893, by which time the word had not come to the attention of the lexicographers. The original did have an entry for "economy" (with its mainly Aristotelian meaning) and a sub-entry for political economy, with the meaning that "economics" now has. The purpose of the change is to make political economy more "scientific." But the impression I get is that when Jevons said "science," he meant "like physics"; Marshall merely meant "more rigorous." Economics isn't like physics, and the attempt to treat it so makes it less rigorous. John C. M?daille