The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other EssaysVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other Essays
Veblen, Thorstein
Economics; Science
The effective working of the teleological bias is best seen in Smith's
more detailed handling of economic phenomena--in his discussion of what
may loosely be called economic institutions--and in the criteria and
principles of procedure by which he is guided in incorporating these
features of economic life into the general structure of his theory. A
fair instance, though perhaps not the most telling one, is the
discussion of the "real and nominal price," and of the "natural and
market price" of commodities, already referred to above.[10] The "real"
price of commodities is their value in terms of human life. At this
point Smith differs from the Physiocrats, with whom the ultimate terms
of value are afforded by human sustenance taken as a product of the
functioning of brute nature; the cause of the difference being that the
Physiocrats conceived the natural order which works towards the material
well-being of man to comprise the non-human environment only, whereas
Adam Smith includes man in this concept of the natural order, and,
indeed, makes him the central figure in the process of production. With
the Physiocrats, production is the work of nature: with Adam Smith, it
is the work of man and nature, with man in the foreground. In Adam
Smith, therefore, labor is the final term in valuation. This "real"
value of commodities is the value imputed to them by the economist under
the stress of his teleological preconception. It has little, if any,
place in the course of economic events, and no bearing on human affairs,
apart from the sentimental influence which such a preconception in favor
of a "real value" in things may exert upon men's notions of what is the
good and equitable course to pursue in their transactions. It is
impossible to gauge this real value of goods; it cannot be measured or
expressed in concrete terms. Still, if labor exchanges for a varying
quantity of goods, "it is their value which varies, not that of the
labor which purchases them."[11] The values which practically attach to
goods in men's handling of them are conceived to be determined without
regard to the real value which Adam Smith imputes to the goods; but, for
all that, the substantial fact with respect to these market values is
their presumed approximation to the real values teleologically imputed
to the goods under the guidance of inviolate natural laws. The real, or
natural, value of articles has no causal relation to the value at which
they exchange. The discussion of how values are determined in practice
runs on the motives of the buyers and sellers, and the relative
advantage enjoyed by the parties to the transaction.[12] It is a
discussion of a process of valuation, quite unrelated to the "real," or
"natural," price of things, and quite unrelated to the grounds on which
things are held to come by their real, or natural, price; and yet, when
the complex process of valuation has been traced out in terms of human
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