ABSTRACT

It is Shackle's view that human conduct is chosen with a view to its consequences. But these are in the future, which cannot be directly known. Expectation will confine itself to what is deemed possible, but this leaves it free to entertain widely diverse and rival hypotheses. How can such skeins of mutually conflicting ideas serve the formation of individual or institutional policy? This is the chief question this book examines.

part I|86 pages

Economic Theory and the Scheme of Things Entire

chapter 1|24 pages

Economic Theory and the Formal Imagination

chapter 2|3 pages

Time, Novelty, Geometry

chapter 4|10 pages

Valuation, Variety and Scalar Quantity

chapter 5|24 pages

Formal Codes and their Efficiency

chapter 6|6 pages

Orientations

chapter 7|7 pages

Reason versus Knowledge

part II|65 pages

The Rise of the Rational Ideal

chapter 8|13 pages

The Construct of Reason

chapter 9|6 pages

Subjective Marginalism

chapter 10|6 pages

The Concept of Value

chapter 11|6 pages

Quantity versus Form

chapter 13|7 pages

Cost and the Meaning of Choice

chapter 15|4 pages

The Value-Construct in the Round

part III|88 pages

The Dissolution of the Rational Ideal

chapter 16|11 pages

Expectation: the Dissolution of Determinacy

chapter 18|9 pages

Kaleidic Investment-Values

chapter 20|14 pages

Liquidity: Its Nature

chapter 21|9 pages

Prices as Convention

chapter 22|12 pages

The Dissolution of Rational Determinacy

part IV|33 pages

Statics: The Rejection of Time

chapter 23|6 pages

The Calculus and the Subjective Ideal

chapter 25|-53 pages

Partial Equilibrium

chapter 26|11 pages

The Rejection of Time

part V|81 pages

Diachronism: The Artefact of Time

chapter 28|11 pages

Marshall’s Accommodation of Time

chapter 29|36 pages

Capital, or the Time-Net of Production

chapter 30|12 pages

Business Cycle Engines

chapter 31|8 pages

History, Theory and World-Picture

chapter 32|3 pages

The Sovereignty of Theory

part VI|92 pages

Epistemics versus Axiomatics

chapter 33|5 pages

The Science of Imprecision

chapter 34|45 pages

Languages for Expectation

chapter 35|13 pages

Profit

chapter 37|16 pages

Kaleidic Economics

chapter 38|6 pages

Economic Theory Unbound