Alfred Marshall’s Economic Biology Mecca and Mechanical Analogies

Abstract

The above passage, taken from the Preface to the last four of the eight editions of Marshall’s Principles, introduces the central themes under discussion in this chapter. The intended role of the biological and mechanical conceptualisations in Marshall’s writings is examined, together with the difficulties Marshall encountered in reconciling these different perspectives. The interpretation of these themes in Marshall’s work by his contemporaries and immediate followers is then considered, largely in the setting of the Marshallian cost controversies of the 1920s.²

The Mecca of the economist lies in economic biology rather than in economic dynamics. But biological conceptions are more complex than those of mechanics; a volume on Foundations must therefore give a relatively large place to mechanical analogies; and frequent use is made of the term ‘equilibrium’ which suggests something of statical analogy …. This fact, combined with the predominant attention paid in the present volume to the normal conditions of life in the modern age, has suggested the notion that its central idea is ‘statical,’ rather than ’dynamical’. But in fact it is concerned throughout with the forces that cause movement: and its key-note is that of dynamics, rather than statics.

(Principles: xiv)¹