Re: Marshall

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 04/08/00 02:41PM >>>
a very interesting post!

Ted Winslow writes: > These influences show up in a number of essential
ways in Marshall's economics.  For instance, Marshall takes a "dialectical"
view of social interdependence.  This underpins his conception of "caeteris
paribus" and his use of the term "normal".<

I don't get how concepts like "ceteris paribus" and "normal" jibe with
dialectics, which involve a process in which ceteris is never paribus and
today's "normal" is always different from yesterday's. How does equilibrium
(which seems a central concept to Marshall) fit in with dialectics?

_________

CB: Equilibrium can be conceived of as "circular change" or quantitative change,which can transform into qualitative change when it breaks out of equilibrium. The transformation of quantitative change into qualitative change is a principle of dialectics.

CB