Slonimsky's view on Antoine-Augustin Cournot∗

∗ Financial aid from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (SEJ2005-07546) is acknowledged. Thanks are also due to an anonymous referee for helpful comments.

Abstract

In 1878 the Russian Liudvig Zinov'sevich Slonimsky published a lengthy article on the mathematization of economics. To defend the legacy of applying mathematics in the study of economics, he made ample uses of both von Thünen and Cournot's works. The article published in Russian and in the Russian Vestnik Evropy (Journal of Europe) has passed virtually ignored by economists. This notes gives a complete account of Slonimsky's references to Cournot's work.

Keywords:

• Cournot's Recherches
• mathematical economics
• economic thought
• Slonimsky's account of Cournot

Notes

∗ Financial aid from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (SEJ2005-07546) is acknowledged. Thanks are also due to an anonymous referee for helpful comments.

1 For an opposite point of view, with references, see Ekelund and Hébert (1990).

2 Echegaray discovered Cournot in 1858, if not earlier, as his book on the theory of functions, published that year, is largely based on Cournot's on the subject, as he himself acknowledges (1858: 5 and 57). He owned this book by Cournot, as well as his Exposition de la théorie des chances et des probabilités, as both copies with his signature are now preserved in the Biblioteca de la Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Madrid. (See also Echegaray 1890: 85; 1917, I: 408, III: 76.) More significant perhaps is Bosch y Fustegueras. He demonstrated familiarity with Cournot's Recherches. In particular, his exposition of the law of demand is entirely based (many paragraphs are literal translations) of Cournot's chapter IV, which he quotes (Bosch 1890: 29ff.). As to Becerra, he was also aware of and much praised Cournot's promising work on the theory of probability, practically ignored in Spain (Becerra 1886: 75). He owned this book by Cournot, as well as the Recherches, as both copies are now preserved in the Biblioteca de la Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Madrid. Unfortunately, it seems that these authors had little influence on their contemporaries.

3 Incidentally, some year later another Canadian-born US astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb paid also tribute to Cournot's genius. In his review of Jevons' theory, Newcomb (1872: 435 – 6) asserted that it was far inferior to Cournot's Recherches in fertility of method and elegance of treatment.

4 For a brief account of his life and career see the entry in Entsiclopedichesky slovar (Brokgaush and Iefron 1900: 428 – 9).

5 As a later example of this attitude is the opinion of Cournot found in the explanatory notes to the works of Marx and Engels, edited in 1955 by the Institute of Marxism – Leninism of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union Communist Party: ‘A vulgar French economist, bourgeois, precursor of the subjective theory of the Political Economy who, in his book “Recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie de richesses”, tried to apply mathematical methods to apologize capitalism’. See Marx and Engels (1972: 631).

6 Incidentally, Vatin errs when he says that the book was first published in Russia in 1901. To be sure Dimitriev's first Essay appeared in 1898; his second and third Essays in 1902, and the three essays were reissued together in 1904, under the title Ekonomicheskie Ocherki (Economic essays).

7 The list of scholars who missed Slonimsky includes, among others, Milhaud (1927), Hecht (1930), Giacalone- Monaco (1939), Reichardt (1954), Homberg (1971), Ménard (1978), Palomba (1984), Ekelund and Hébert (1990) and Theocharis (1990).

8 Slonimsky's quotations are from Du Puynode (1868: 245 – 6), a rather mediocre French economist.

9 In his comments to K. Rau's book Lehrbuch der politichen Ökonomie (re-edited by A. Wagner in 1876), Marx, following him, quotes the Recherches by Cournot (cf. Marx and Engels 1972: 383). However, among the books and correspondence of Marx, kept at the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History in Moscow, there is no evidence that he knew of Cournot.