This history of theories and theorists of economic growth elucidates the economic theory, economic history, and public policy observations of the renowned scholar W. W. Rostow. Looking at the economic growth theories of the classic economists up to 1870, Rostow compares Hume and Adam Smith, Malthus and Ricardo, and J.S. Mill and Karl Marx. He then examines the period 1870-1939 and its economic theorists, including Schumpeter, Colin Clark, Kuznets, and Harrod, and surveys the three forms of growth analysis (...) in the postwar era: formal models, statistical morphology, and development theories. This authoritative overview also includes an agenda of unresolved problems in growth analysis and a description of the five major tasks statesmen will confront over the next several generations. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of 'new paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn's work in a careful and accessible way, emphasizing Kuhn's detailed studies of (...) the history of science, which often assist the understanding of his more abstract philosophical work. These historical studies provide vital insight into what Kuhn was actually trying to achieve in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: an endeavour far less extreme than either his 'foes' or his 'fans' claim. In the book's second half, Sharrock and Read provide excellent explications, defences and, where appropriate, criticisms of Kuhn's central concept of 'incommensurability', and tackle head on the crucial issue of whether Kuhn's insights concerning the natural sciences can be extrapolated to other disciplines, such as the social sciences. This is the first comprehensive introduction to the work of Kuhn and it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in philosophy, theory of science, management science and anthropology. (shrink)

The last section of “Lecture at Zilsel’s” [9, §4] contains an interesting but quite condensed discussion of Gentzen’s first version of his consistency proof for P A [8], reformulating it as what has come to be called the no-counterexample interpretation. I will describe Gentzen’s result (in game-theoretic terms), fill in the details (with some corrections) of Godel's reformulation, and discuss the relation between the two proofs.