ABSTRACT
Economics had started out as a theory of society, at the same time normative and positive, and tied to a pecuniary version of the extremum principle. Development of economic theory since the middle of the nineteenth century has been described earlier as a steady process of erosion of classical determinism. Though not himself the originator of this transformation, J. S. Mill formulated the new tendencies in a representative statement. In order to understand the meaning of the methodological bifurcation, one must focus on the precise relationship in which the science and the art of Economics were supposed to stand. Mill has analyzed this relationship minutely and has come up with statements that at first sight read like a program of Political Economics. The major achievement of utility theory has often been defined as its capacity for deriving "value of exchange" or price from "value in use".
