Abstract
The eighteenth century is typically identified as the period in which modern economic thought emerged. The influence of new scientific methodologies led to the conceptualization of the economy as a system of interrelated components and forces governed by natural laws. Epistemological authority also came from the incorporation of a specific narrative structure and kinds of evidence. This chapter shows how these developments were influenced not just by seventeenth-century debates about the nature of scientific knowledge, but by changes in how language, discourse, and textual genre were understood. Discussions of linguistic and textual representation appear in early writings on economic topics. These writers participated in a struggle for discursive power encoded in debates about the nature of systematic analysis. Eventually, this lead to a particular narrative form being identified as “scientific” and, therefore, authoritative. This transformation came about only gradually, though. Even at the end of the eighteenth century, multiple forms of economic reasoning competed for legitimacy.
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Bradbury, J.M. (2017). Prose Genre and the Emergence of Modern Economic Reasoning in Eighteenth-Century Britain. In: Bek-Thomsen, J., Christiansen, C., Gaarsmand Jacobsen, S., Thorup, M. (eds) History of Economic Rationalities. Ethical Economy, vol 54. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52815-1_8
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