Jevons and Marshall as Humboldtian Scientists

In a famous essay in Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period (1978), the historian of science Susan Faye Cannon explored the notion of “Humboldtian science” to characterize the way of working of some of the great Victorian scientists, such as John Herschel and Charles Darwin. This essay takes up Cannon’s notion of Humboldtian science to see if anything is gained if we apply it to two Victorian political economists who are central to the change in methods political economy experienced in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. By thinking about Jevons and Marshall as Humboldtians, the attention shifts from their theoretical and philosophical tenets toward their research practices. Cannon invites us to not ask about their theories, but about their ways of working, about how they came to write the way they did. Too often, in my view, historians of economics forget that studying the work of economists is not just studying their ideas. At the end of the day, it is work that finds its way to print, and to understand how this work is done, we not only need to understand the ideas that may have guided them in producing it, but also its actual mode of production.