Science and Society in William Stanley Jevons's Thought: A Dual Nature

This open access book deals with the ideas and work of William Stanley Jevons (1835 - 1882).Jevons is now mainly known as an economist. His revision of the theory of value and the definition of the principle of decreasing marginal utility gained him a prominent place in the history of economic thought.However, Jevons’s oeuvre goes far beyond his contribution to economics.He was a logician and a natural scientist. Jevons was always a godly man, and his religious beliefs, far from being a merely private aspect, were highly influential in his works.He was interested in evolutionism, and especially in Herbert Spencer’s philosophy.This book explores Jevons’s work as a Victorian social scientist, who was committed to understand the natural laws regulating human society in order to improve it.The book explores several different facets of Jevons's thought, such as: his religious views, in connection with scientific method and study of probability; the link between nineteenth-century Unitariani