Arts and Charts

Mathematical Economics

In the 1880s, a new discipline emerged in American universities: “economics,” which took the place of the “political economy” that prior generations of students had learned. But these new “economists” disagreed about how to explain their science. Some more old-fashioned members wanted to keep to arranging data into charts and tables—a kind of macro version of the old account book. But others, often called the “marginalists” because of their emphasis on marginal utility, disagreed. In 1890, English economist Alfred Marshall published his Principles of Political Economy, which quickly became one of the most widely used economic textbooks of the early twentieth century. Instead of using tables, Marshall presented economic activity through graphs and formulae. Now, instead of numerical data, abstract concepts like “demand” and “utility” could be explained with curved lines that suggested movement, rather than static account books. This mathematical version of economics ultimately prevailed, and graphs replaced tables in experts’ understanding of “the economy” writ large.

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