Part of the book series:Recent Economic Thought Series ((RETH,volume 21))
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The place of Leon Walras in the history of Western economic thought would appear honorable and secure. One of the earliest to proclaim his stature was Joseph Schumpeter (1954, p. 827): “So far as pure theory is concerned, Walras is in my opinion the greatest of all economists. His system of economic equilibrium, uniting as it does, the quality of ‘revolutionary’ creativeness with the quality of classic synthesis, is the only work by an economist that will stand in comparison with theoretical physics.” In the interim, this conviction has become institutionalized to such an extent that the recipient of the 1983 Nobel Prize in economics could assert that, “Walras wrote one of the greatest classics, if not the greatest, in our science” (Debreu, 1984, p. 268).
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different.
— Goethe
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- Philip Mirowski
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- Pamela Cook
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Mirowski, P., Cook, P. (1990). Walras’ “Economics and Mechanics”: Translation, Commentary, Context. In: Samuels, W.J. (eds) Economics As Discourse. Recent Economic Thought Series, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1377-1_7
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