The Emergence of the Neoclassical Consumption Function: The Formative Years, 1940–1952

Abstract

History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed (Kuhn, 1962a, p. 1). Certain types of experimental findings serve as benchmarks, permanent facts about phenomena which any future theory must accommodate, and which in conjunction with comparable theoretical benchmarks, pretty permanently force us in one direction. … The remarkable fact about recent physical science is that it creates a new, collective, human artifact, by giving full range to three fundamental human interests, speculation, calculation, and experiment. By engaging in collaboration between the three, it enriches each in a way that would be impossible otherwise (Hacking, 1983, p. 248).