ABSTRACT
Since its incarnation as a ‘science’ (taken to be with the publication in 1776 of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations), economic theoreticians and other practitioners of the ‘dismal science’ have acknowledged that a great many of those variables essential to an understanding of the actual workings of an economy are immeasurable of being measured. Among those variables for which measurement and calculation are impractical if not impossible are many, such as utility, uncertainty, and intensity of preferences, which are so subjective but which are nonetheless (or at any rate should be) among the primary concerns of the discipline.
