The Methodology Of Economics

The nature of economic analysis underwent a profound change in the second half of the nineteenth century. The "battle of methods" ("Methodenstreit") in Germany between pure theory and empirically based historical methods is well documented, but the equally significant debates in the UK have not been as widely covered.
This set charts the crucial transition from classical to neo-classical economics. Texts from such significant figures as J. S. Mill, J. E. Cairns, J. N. Keynes, Nassau Senior, Henry Sedgwick and Alfred Marshall illustrate the gradual transformation of economics from the fully contextualized political economy of the early classical economists to the abstract, deductive theory of neo-classical economics.