The Secret Marriage

In the manner of a large rock dropped into a tranquil pool the intellectual stir created in the 1870's by Stanley Jevons in London, Carl Menger in Vienna, and Leon Walras in Lausanne, sent waves in all directions, some of which have not entirely subsided even today. The tranquil pool was that of classical economics, then particularly associated with John Stuart Mill, while the rock heaved by this triumvirate of genial economists - each, at first, unacquainted with, the others - is known to us as' the margin a list revolution' or, less happily, 'neo-classical economics.'

This note is concerned with the relationship of mathematics to the new ideas, and the consequences for economic science of the movement to 'mathernatize' it. A brief list of the principal writers and works mentioned in the text is given at the end.