Overview

This open access book deals with the ideas and work of William Stanley Jevons (1835 – 1882). Jevons is now mainly known as an economist. His revision of the theory of value and the definition of the principle of decreasing marginal utility gained him a prominent place in the history of economic thought. However, Jevons’s oeuvre goes far beyond his contribution to economics. He was a logician and a natural scientist. Jevons was always a godly man, and his religious beliefs, far from being a merely private aspect, were highly influential in his works. He was interested in evolutionism, and especially in Herbert Spencer’s philosophy. This book explores Jevons’s work as a Victorian social scientist, who was committed to understand the natural laws regulating human society in order to improve it. The book explores several different facets of Jevons's thought, such as: his religious views, in connection with scientific method and study of probability; the link between nineteenth-century Unitarianism, the branch of Dissent of which Jevons was part, and his moral and political thought; the role played by Herbert Spencer’s thought in Jevons’s political philosophy; the relevance of his religious views, philosophy of logic, moral and political thought to his economic theory.

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9783032187307

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Eleonora Buono currently is post-doctoral fellow at the University of Padova. She is a historian of political thought focused on Victorian Britain and has published in several international journals, such as History of Political Thought and The Review of Politics.

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