Breaking New Ground: The Significance of W.S. Jevons's Rent Theory

In The Theory of Political Economy (1871), W.S. Jevons argued that his representation of rent theory in the form of the calculus had provided a 'clue to the correct mode of treating the whole science'. An explanation for the clue could cast some light on how Jevons's marginalist theory was produced, although he failed to do so. This article suggests that an explanation turns on identifying the way that Jevons had transformed his predecessors' rent theory. The explanation, in turn, clarifies how the calculus imposed a particular form of theoretical representation that constituted an analytical break with preceding work in British political economy.