Abstract
SIR ALEXANDER GRAY'S presidential address to Section F (Economics) provides a survey of recent and current trends in economics. He points out that it would be possible to learn much about the continually changing view of the subject-matter of economics by reading in chronological order the definitions of economics given by its leading exponents. In Adam Smith, it was considered “as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator". In the early part of the nineteenth century (as exemplified by Senior) there was a conscious effort to transform economics into a wholly independent scientific discipline, establishing laws or generalizations, while remaining perpetually and eternally neutral in a world of conflict. Broadly, the nineteenth century was in the main a period of specialization, when the economist tried to keep himself to himself, and to pursue the peculiar problems of his own specialism.
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Economics: Yesterday and To-Morrow. Nature 164, 391 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164391a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164391a0