Concept and Its Matrix

Abstract

In nineteenth-century Germany a special orientation of economic thought developed which has become known as the Historical School. After the Napoleonic conquests, the socioeconomic system of what was still an agrarian and feudal society began to develop rapidly. In this cultural climate a historically and organically oriented type of economic thought flourished, which was focussed mainly on economic development. The idea of development was partly formulated in organic terms, which later came to be expressed by the Darwinian term “evolution”. The present study is concerned with this way of thought: what it means, what its roots were, and what its significance to economics is.