Die herausragende Stellung Carl Mengers in der Volkswirschaftslehre wird in dogmenhistorischen Studien hauptsächlich darin gesehen, dass er den entscheidenden Schritt in Richtung einer subjektivistisch fundierten Erklärung des Wertes unternommen hat. Das Hauptziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, zu zeigen, inwiefern in seinem Werk darüber hinaus auch Ansatzpunkte vorhanden sind, die für das moderne Wettbewerbsverständnis theoretisch relevant sind und Menger außer als Preistheoretiker auch als Wettbewerbstheoretiker erscheinen lassen können. Es wird gezeigt, dass alle fünf wichtigen Elemente der modernen Wettbewerbstheorie in mehr (...) oder weniger entwickelter Form in Mengers Werk zu finden sind: der prozessuale Charakter des Wettbewerbs, die Vielfalt an Wettbewerbsparametern, die Bedeutung der Zeit und der Wachstumsaspekt. (shrink)

This paper looks at how the idea of pointless topology itself evolved during its pre-localic phase by analyzing the definitions of the concept of topological space of Menger and Nöbeling. Menger put forward a topology of lumps in order to generalize the definition of the real line. As to Nöbeling, he developed an abstract theory of posets so that a topological space becomes a particular case of topological poset. The analysis emphasizes two points. First, Menger's geometrical perspective (...) was superseded by an algebraic one, a lattice-theoretical one to be precise. Second, Menger's bottom–up approach was replaced by a top–down one. (shrink)

There are, familiarly, a range of distinct and competing accounts of the methodological underpinnings of Menger' s work. These include Leibnizian, Kantian, Millian, and even Popperian readings; but they include also readings of an Aristotelian sort, and I have myself made a number of contributions in clarification and defence of the latter. Not only, I have argued, does the historical situation in which Menger found himself point to the inevitability of the Aristotelian reading; this reading fits also very (...) naturally to the text of Menger's works. (shrink)

During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life (...) nearly a hundred years after his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this article, we discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf. (shrink)

In Searle’s social ontology, collective intentionality is an essential component of all institutional facts. This is because the latter involve the assignment of functions, namely "status functions," on entities whose physical features do not guarantee their performance, therefore requiring our acceptance that it be performed. One counter-example to that claim can be found in Carl Menger’s individualistic account of the money system. Menger’s commitment to the self-interest assumption, however, prevents him from accounting for the deontic dimensions of institutional (...) facts. (shrink)

Although their contributions to the history of economic thought and their scholarly reputations are firmly established, relatively little is known about the relationship between Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School of economics, and his son, Karl Menger, the mathematician, geometer, logician, and philosopher of science, whose famous Mathematical Colloquium at the University of Vienna was central to the early literature on the existence of general equilibrium and the concomitant development of mathematical economics. The present paper begins to (...) fill this gap. Karl Menger’s diaries, held in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, offer insight into the intimate relationships within the Menger clan, Karl’s work and study habits, and the development of his uncommonly broad intellect, as well as on life in a vanquished city, Vienna, in the immediate wake of the humiliating defeat of the First World War and the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire. (shrink)

While it is well known that Carl Menger and Stanley Jevons adopted very different views on the role of mathematics in economics1, it is usually admitted that their respective views on the theory of value were relatively close. Indeed, both strongly objected to the classical theory of value which is based on objective costs of production, whether these be labour or capital costs. Moreover, each elaborated, roughly at the same time, an alternative economic theory based on a comparison between (...) the various degrees to which needs are fulfilled thanks to goods whose effect tends progressively to diminish with the fulfilment of these needs. Furthermore, each managed to ground a theory of economic exchange on the fact that people are rational enough to choose which of two goods will provide them with the greatest benefit. In the face of such similarities, it is tempting to conclude that, while using very different terminologies, these two economists developed quite similar analyses whose key element is a subjective theory of value which was opposed to the objective theory of the classical economists. It is true that specialists of Austrian economics have often underscored the originality of Menger's position and its differences with those of the two other fathers of the so-called marginalist revolution, but while they have seriously questioned the.. (shrink)

Due to the famous methodenstreit it is often well argued that Menger’s approach to social sciences can be seen as anti-historical, as according to him pure empirical studies are insufficient to establish a firm economic theory. By suggesting that some theorems have to precede historical studies, Menger may be seen as a representative of the a priori tradition in scientific method. The modern method in the mainstream of economic thinking is also to a large extent anti-historical and a (...) priori, but because of its lack of realism and extensive reliance on very limiting assumptions. The main strength of the Mengerian anti-historical approach is lesser faith in imaginary constructs, implying a higher degree of realism in theorizing. (shrink)

This paper deals with the relation with Fuzzy Logic of some of the ideas of Karl Menger published between 1942 and 1966 and concerning what he called “Hazy Sets”, Probabilistic Relations and Statistical Metric Spaces. The author maintains the opinion that if Lofti A. Zadeh is actually the father of Fuzzy Logic, Menger not only was a forerunner of this field but that his ideas were and still are influential on it.

We establish a surprising connection between Menger's classical covering property and Blass-Laflamme's modern combinatorial notion of groupwise density. This connection implies a short proof of the groupwise density bound on the additivity number for Menger's property.

Specialists often maintain that Menger has been strongly influenced by Aristotle’s thought ideas.This paper shows that although using Aristotle’s categories and general framework there are some issues in which Menger’s conclusions differs from Aristotle’s.This hint out that Menger’s knowledge of Aristotle’s ideas was not sufficiently deep and precise so as to completely capture its very spirit.Section two lays out the differences between Menger’s conception of theoretical science applied to economics and Aristotle’s conception of economics as a (...) practical science.Section three maintains that the Mengerian claim about the methodological absurdity of empirically testing the conclusions of exact research is not genuinely Aristotelian.Section four deals with the issue of Menger’s concept of organic social institutions showing its differences visà- vis an Aristotelian position.Les spécialistes soutiennent souvent que Menger a été fortement influencé par la pensée d’Aristote.Cet article montre que, bien qu’empruntant les catégories et la structure générale d’Aristote, certaines des conclusions de Menger diffèrent de celles d’Aristote.L’article suggère que la connaissance qu’avait Menger des idées d’Aristote n’était pas suffisamment approfondie et précise pour en appréhender le sens plein.La section deux présente les différences entre la conception de la science théorique présente dans l’économique de Menger et la conception aristotélicienne de l’économie comme une science pratique.La troisième section soutient que l’argument de Menger au sujet de l’absurdité méthodologique des tests empiriques des conclusions de la recherche exacte n’est pas réellement aristotélicien. La section quatre aborde la question des institutions sociales organiques chez Menger et montre ses différences vis-à-vis de la position aristotélicienne. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to examine the legacy of Menger’s theory of social institutions. We argue that Menger’s insights about the origin of social structures inspired later contributions in three main areas: theory of spontaneous order, theory of money, and theory of law.

We prove Menger’s theorem for countable graphs in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\Pi^1_1\tt{-CA}_0}}$$\end{document}. Our proof in fact proves a stronger statement, which we call extended Menger’s theorem, that is equivalent to \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\Pi^1_1\tt{-CA}_0}}$$\end{document} over \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\tt{RCA}_0}}$$\end{document}.

We prove Menger’s theorem for countable graphs in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\Pi^1_1\tt{-CA}_0}}$$\end{document}. Our proof in fact proves a stronger statement, which we call extended Menger’s theorem, that is equivalent to \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\Pi^1_1\tt{-CA}_0}}$$\end{document} over \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\tt{RCA}_0}}$$\end{document}.

Karl Menger (1902-1985) was the mathematician son of the famous economist Carl Menger. When he was professor of geometry at the University of Vienna from 1927 to 1938, he joined the Vienna Circle and founded his Mathematical Colloquium. This title offers the transcription of those parts of Menger's notes.

In the latter half of the 19th century, economic thought in the Germanspeaking world was dominated, both intellectually and academically, by the so-called historical school, from Wilhelm Roscher to Gustav Schmoller and others. In 1871, the Austrian Carl Menger published his Grun&tze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Menger, 1976 (1871)), customarily referred to as one of the three simultaneous discoveries of marginalist economics-the other two marginalist ‘revolutionaries’ being Jevons in England and Walras in France. Twelve years later, in 1883, Menger (...) published a major methodological treatise entitled Untersuchungen iiber die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der Politischen Oekonomie insbesondere (Menger, 1963 (1883)). This book included criticisms of some of the historicist principles of doing economics. In the same year, Schmoller, leader of the German historicists, wrote a critical review of Menger’s book (Schmoller, 1883). Menger reacted forcefully with a more straightforwardly polemical small book, Die Irrthiimer des Historismus in der deutschen National6konomie (Menger, 1884). Commentaries by others appeared in later years, but this brief episode amounted to what has thereafter been called the Methodenstreit between Menger and Schmoller. It has been established as perhaps the most famous methodological controversy in the history of the social sciences. (shrink)

Philosophers of Capitalism provides an interdisciplinary approach, attempting to discover the feasibility of an integration of Austrian Economics and Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Edward W. Younkins supplies essays presenting the essential ideas of Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Ayn Rand, as well as scholarly essays discussing the theorists and the interaction of their theories.

Philosophers of Capitalism provides an interdisciplinary approach, attempting to discover the feasibility of an integration of Austrian Economics and Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Edward W. Younkins supplies essays presenting the essential ideas of Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Ayn Rand, as well as scholarly essays discussing the theorists and the interaction of their theories.

The article focuses on the anti-naturalism of Menger and Mises. It presents a methodological approach formulated by both scholars as stemming from epistemological anti-naturalism and demonstrating similarities to social phenomenology. The article also discusses the development of the anti-naturalistic perspective on the basis of Hayek’s conception of sensory order. The latter allowed addressing the problem of validity of methodological dualism and established a sound foundation for the methodological approach of the Austrian School of Economics.

In an oft-quoted paper entitled “To What Extent Was the Austrian School Marginalist?”, Streissler challenged earlier interpretations of Menger’s work that had accorded equal billing to Menger alongside Jevons and Walras as co-discoverer of the marginalist principle. In Streissler’s words, Menger was exceptionally great because he created marginalism at the same time that he surpassed it: the essence of Menger’s contribution to economic science was to be located in his subjectivist vision of the economy rather than (...) in marginalism per se. Streissler’s interpretation presaged Professor Kirzner’s subsequent rendering of Menger’s work, namely, that Menger’s subjectivist vision of the system as whole forms the very core of his contribution. This paper argues that, while these modern subjectivist reinterpretations are more faithful to Menger’s work than the earlier restrictive marginalist interpretations, they have nonetheless failed to identify Menger’s ‘vision.’ It is submitted here that this vision is to be located in Menger’s intention of constructing a theory of complex economic phenomena. Building upon Alfred Whitehead’s “process philosophy”, this paper provides a philosophically realist reconstruction of Menger’s theory of complex phenomena before investigating its pervasiveness and significance in the economic sphere.Dans un article célèbre intitulé “To What Extent Was the Austrian School Marginalist?”, Streissler remit en cause les interprétations antérieures de l’oeuvre de Menger qui faisaient de ce dernier un des co-inventeurs du principe marginaliste au même titre que Jevons et Walras. Pour Streissler, Menger était exceptionnellement grand parce qu’il créa le marginalisme en même temps qu’il le surpassa : l’essence de la contribution de Menger à la science économique se trouvait dans sa vision subjectiviste de l’économie plus que dans le marginalisme en soi. L’article de Streissler annonçait l’interprétation que devait donner le Professeur Kirzner de la contribution de Menger, à savoir que sa vision subjectiviste du système dans son ensemble constituait le coeur même de sa contribution. Ces réinterprétations subjectivistes modernes de l’oeuvre de Menger sont certes plus fidèles à celle-ci que les interprétations étroites antérieures données sous l’angle marginaliste. Ces réinterprétations modernes n’ont pas pour autant identifié la vision qu’avait Menger de la sphère économique. L’article suggère que cette vision se situe dans la théorie des phénomènes complexes de l’économie que Menger se propose d’élaborer. En se fondant sur “ la pensée du procès ” d’Alfred Whitehead, l’article propose une reconstruction philosophico-réaliste de la théorie des phénomènes complexes de Menger avant d’illustrer sa pertinence et son importance dans la sphère économique. (shrink)

Les pères de l’école connue sous le nom d’ « École autrichienne d’économie », Carl Menger (1840-1921) et son premier disciple Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851-1914), ont analysé les pratiques d’affaires et la nature des activités de l’entrepreneur au-delà de ce qui se faisait en leur temps au sein de l’école historique allemande. Ont-ils pour autant déjà donné une « théorie de l’entrepreneur » en tant que telle, et le pouvaient-ils? Toujours est-il qu’émergent dans leurs œuvres les éléments d’analyse d’un (...) intérêt neuf pour des aspects de l’entreprise et la nature du système de production capitaliste dont l’impact allait se faire sentir de la société de leurs contemporains et chez leurs héritiers (comme Israel Kirzner) jusqu’à nos jours. (shrink)

There is no doubt that Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises can be considered as two of the most representative and influential members of the Austrian school of economics. However, given the fact that this school is well known for being a methodological school, it might be surprizing to note how far these two prominent economists apparently stand on methodological questions. While Menger frequently insisted that "no essential differences between the ethical and the natural sciences exists, but at (...) most only one of degree"1, Mises emphasizes the alleged gulf between social and natural sciences to the point of adopting what he called a "methodological dualism". As a consequence of this dualism, Mises did not hesitate when it comes to the analysis of human action to refer to laws "derived a priori" that "permit of no exception" because they belong to "an aprioristic and universally valid theory" 2. Such an uncompromising apriorism was so contrary to the empiricist mood of.. (shrink)

Carl Menger's methodology describes reality as neatly organized, being constructed additively from strictly regular simple elements called pure types. Such a conception of the world's structure seems to invite mathematical treatment. Yet, his economics is not a mathematical one, and he even explicitly rejected mathematical approach to economics. This apparent puzzle is explained by Menger's failure to deliver in his methodological writings a realistic portrayal of what he was actually doing in his economics. His implicit ambition to retain (...) the full meaning of the natural language concepts while using them simultaneously as theoretical concepts makes his economics dependent on the general human knowledge. Because the latter is mostly non-mathematical, so has to remain the former. This makes his economics both richer as well as fuzzier as compared with mathematical economics. This seems to be the result of a deliberate decision to keep his economic theory more realistic. (shrink)