GOSSEN, Hermann Heinrich.

£3,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Entwickelung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs, und der darau fliessenden Regeln für menschliches Handeln. Re-issue of the first edition sheets, originally published in Brunswick in 1854 at the author's own expense, here with new half-title and title page and a leaf of prefatory text by the publisher."Gossen, though perhaps not quite a genius, had a brilliant, original, and precise mind. With his one book, he moved constrained optimization into the centre of the theory of value and allocation, where it has since remained. With respect to economic content, his was probably the greatest single contribution to this theory in the 19th century. He failed, however, to develop the basic principle into a usable analytical engine. As a consequence, the so-called 'founders' of the modern theory of value had to rediscover those principles before they could proceed with their engineering work" (Jürg Niehans in The New Palgrave II). The work is an attempt to found economics on a mathematical basis, and the author regarded his services in the reform of the method of the science as similar to those of Copernicus in astronomy. The work, which had generally been overlooked even in Germany (it is not mentioned in Roscher's History), was only brought to public attention when Jevons gave an account of it in the preface to the second edition of his Theory of Political Economy (1879).

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