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Cournot just a proto-marginalist or an evolutionary economist?

(Methodos XVI)

 

Marc Jacquinet

Arsenal of Veneza

Augustin Cournot is generally considered as a central figure in the building of modern microeconomics and mathematical modelling.  What is not generally recognized in economics is his works on statistics and on methodology and philosophy of science.  The economic papers of Cournot appear quite early in his academic career under the auspices of the mathematician Poisson.[1]     He recognized different influences from Leibniz, Laplace and Condorcet.  His rationalist concept of science comes from them all.  His optimism and drive to apply mathematics to human societies are congruent with Leibniz philosophy but come above all from the social mathematics (mathématique sociale) of Condorcet and the probability theory of Laplace.  From Laplace, to be more precise, he will use probability theory and mechanical analogies and apply them to the social phenomena in the same way as it was applied in natural phenomena (Louçã 1997). 

Those are the influences we can find in Cournot by the time he has written most of his works in economics that did not receive the attention he hoped and this turn him somehow a bitter man.  Nevertheless, his methodological work did continue and his position has evolved – quite unexpectedly for a positivist assuming the legacy of Condorcet – towards biology and vitalism (Milhaud 1927).  In fact it is not unexpected because Cournot, contrary to Comte did not practice his mental health [2] and continued to get interested in the development of contemporaneous sciences, not just physics, (he translated a treaty on astronomy), mathematics (he wrote several books on mathematics and statistics, collaborated with Poisson), political economy but also the philosophy of science and biology.  This last aspect of his scholarship was and still is completely neglected by economists –Walras valued mostly and almost exclusively his mathematics of wealth- but not by mathematicians (Poincaré 190?), philosophers  and epistemologically inclined scientists (e. g. Pierre Duhem).[3]



            If Cournot began his career by translating books of astronomy and mechanics and adopted the mechanical metaphor from the world of order conceived by Laplace; later in his life, he recognized explicitly the value of life as a metaphor for the social world.  Two other aspects have to be stressed: on the one hand Cournot devoted part of his teaching and research to the problem of randomness or chance (hazard)[4] and, on the other hand, on the issue of historical processes; the latter being associated to biology and life rather than physics.    Milhaud characterized Cournot Essay of 1851 as still social physics but referred to social biology for his subsequent works (Milhaud 1927).   There appears to be a rupture in Comte’s conception and method of scientific enquiry.  He distinguished the inorganic world from the organic one (life).  For him the difference is such that it justifies a profound change of method.  According to him, there is a discontinuous character between the physical world and the chemical phenomena.  The complexity of the phenomena increases when we enter the problem of life, and still more complex is the social world, with history being the extreme, out of reach from science as Cournot conceive it.  He thought of extending the biological principle (principe vital) to the evolution of societies.  The vital force inspired by biology was the principle that he referred to for studying societies, physics for mechanical forces and biology for life (biological forces).

Cournot sustained that we should take reality as it appears to us and not as we would like it to be (Milhaud 1927).  He studied history and considered that it contained an irreducible element; similar to the conception he had about randomness. 

[1] His Researches into the Mathematical Principles of Wealth (1838) appeared at a time he was working on probability theory – of which he will publish an interesting treaty Exposition de la théorie des chances et des probabilités published in 1843.  Most of the works that will follow develop his methodology and philosophy for social sciences, and of interest for the present work.  Besides his Essay on the foundations of knowledge, we can refer to: his Traité de l’enchaînement des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire of 1861; his restatement of his 1838 book; Principes de la théorie des richesses, 1863; Les institutions d’instruction publiques en France, 1864; his Considérations sur la marche des idées et des événements dans les temps modernes, 2 vols, 1872; and, finally, his Matérialisme, vitalisme, rationalisme: Études des données de las science en philosophie, in 1875 and the last book on economics he published the year of his death, Revue sommaire des doctrines économiques, 1877.

 

[2] What Comte called higiène mentale was his refusal to read any scientific literature in order to be able to write his positivist projects for a new science and the renewal of society.  Mill although fascinated by Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive did not consider this stand as fruitful for science as well as the vagaries of Comte’s later philosophical writings and activist pamphlets.

[3] See note 1.

[4] Cournot did consider that randomness does not disappear even if our knowledge of phenomena increases.  On the other hand, he recognized different types of probabilities that might be of interest for the current research in imprecise probabilities.  However, Laplace’s influence has been strong and he conceived a posteriori probabilities. 



OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Marc Jacquinet (8 décembre 2019). Cournot just a proto-marginalist or an evolutionary economist? Critique du management. Consulté le 10 mai 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/ne24


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