================= HES POSTING ================= 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 ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]