Hostname: page-component-5447f9dfdb-6cxwp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-28T10:14:03.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

John Stuart Mill's Method In Principle and Practice: A Review of the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Samuel Hollander  and
Sandra Peart
Samuel Hollander
Affiliation:
LATAPSES, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis/CNRS, France
Sandra Peart
Affiliation:
Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea OH
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Our concern is John Stuart Mill's methodological pronouncements, his actual practice, and the relationship between them. We argue that verification played a key role in Mill's method, both in principle and in practice. Our starting point is the celebrated declaration regarding verification in the essay On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It (1836/ 1967; hereafter Essay): “By the method à priori we mean … reasoning from an assumed hypothesis; which … is the essence of all science which admits of general reasoning at all. To verify the hypothesis itself à posteriori, that is, to examine whether the facts of any actual case are in accordance with it, is no part of the business of science at all, but of the application of science” (Mill 1836/1967, p. 325). The apparent position that the basic economic theory is impervious to predictive failure emerges also in a sharp criticism of the à posteriori method:

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , December 1999 , pp. 369 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Blaug, M. 1980. The Methodology of Economics, or How Economists Explain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blaug, M. 1992. The Methodology of Economics, or How Economists Explain, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bordo, M.D. 1975. “John E. Cairnes on the Effects of the Australian Gold Discoveries 1851–73: An Early Application of the Methodology of Political Economics.” History of Political Economy 7 (3): 337–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coleman, W.O. 1996. “How Theory Came to English Classical Economics.” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 43 (May): 207–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Marchi, N. 1986. “Mill's Unrevised Philosophy of Economics: A Comment on Hausman.” Philosophy of Science 53 (1): 89–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Marchi, N. 1988. “John Stuart Mill Interpretation Since Schumpeter.” In Thweatt, W.O. ed., Classical Political Economy: A Survey of Recent Literature. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 137–162.Google Scholar
De Marchi, N. 1998. “Putting evidence in its place: John Mill's early struggles with history.” Paper presented at the Leverhulme Conference on 19th Century Historical Political Economy, King's College, Cambridge, October 2–3, 1998.Google Scholar
Fels, R. 1991. “Review of Hirsch and De Marchi, Milton Friedman: Economics in Theory and Practice.” Journal of Economic Literature 29 (1): 84–85.Google Scholar
Hausman, D.M. 1981. “J.S. Mill's Philosophy of Economics.” Philosophy of Science 48 (September): 363–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, D.M. 1989. “Economic Methodology in a Nutshell.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 48 (2): 115–127.Google Scholar
Hirsch, A. 1986. “Review of Hollander, The Economics of John Stuart Mill.” Kyklos 39 (4): 621–623.Google Scholar
Hirsch, A. 1992. “John Stuart Mill on Verification and the Business of Science.” History of Political Economy, 24 (Winter): 843–866.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, A. and De Marchi, N. 1990. Milton Friedman: Economics in Theory and Practice. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollander, S. 1985. The Economics of John Stuart Mill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Jevons, W.S. 1877. The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method.Google Scholar
Second edition. London: Macmillan, 1907.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1823. “Errors of the Spanish Government.” In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XII. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986, 39–42.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1831. “The Spirit of the Age, II.” In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXII. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986, 238–245.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1834. “Miss Martineau's Summary of Political Economy.” In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, IV. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967, 223–228.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1836. “Civilization.” In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XVIII. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977, 117–147.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1836. “On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Philosophical Investigation Proper to It.” In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, IV. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967, 309–339.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1843. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Deductive. In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, VII–VIII. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973–74.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1844. “Of the Influence of Consumption of Production.” In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, IV. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967, 262–279.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1848. Principles of Political Economy. In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, II–III. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1865. Auguste Comte and Positivism. In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, X. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969, 261–368.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1867. Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews. In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXI. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984, 215–257.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1869. “The Subjection of Women.” In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXI. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984, 259–340.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1967. The Earlier Letters 1812 to 1848. In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XII–XIII. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1972. The Later Letters 1849–1873. In Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XIV–XVII. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Peart, S. 1991. “Sunspots and Expectations: W.S. Jevons's Theory of Economic Fluctuations.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 13 (2): 243–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peart, S. 1993. “W.S. Jevons's Methodology of Economics: Some Implications of the Procedures for Inductive Quantification.” History of Political Economy 25 (3): 435–460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peart, S. 1995. “‘Disturbing causes,’ ‘noxious errors,’ and the theory-practice distinction in the economics of J.S. Mill and W.S. Jevons.” Canadian Journal of Economics 28 (4b): 1194–1211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peart, S. 1996. The Economics of W.S. Jevons. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Peart, S. 1998. “Jevons and Menger Re-homogenized? Jaffé after 20 Years.” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 57 (3): 307–326.Google Scholar
Peart, S. forthcoming. “Irrationality and Intertemporal Choice in Early Neoclassical Thought.” Canadian Journal of Economics.Google Scholar
Schwartz, P. 1972. The New Political Economy of J.S. Mill. London: London School of Economics.Google Scholar
Smith, A. 1776. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Modern Library, 1937.Google Scholar