Abstract:
This paper was conceived in conversations with my colleague Neil B. de Marchi between 1979 and 1981 and born in a seminar we jointly taught at Duke in Spring 1982 with Anthony Brewer (visiting from the University of Bristol). A preliminary version of the paper was read at the History of Economics Society Meetings at Duke in May 1982. I am deeply grateful to Kenneth Arrow, John Chipman, Gerard Debreu, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Tjalling Koopmans, Lionel McKenzie, Gerhard Tintner, and Allen Wallis for answering many questions posed to them in several letters, and for their will- ingness to allow me to quote from their responses in this paper.
