"The time I trust will come, perhaps within the lives of some of us, when the outline of this science will be clearly made out and generally recognised, when its nomenclature will be fixed, and its principles form a part of elementary instruction"
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Senior is selling inevitability, and he does it with the calm confidence of someone trying to build a discipline into an institution. Writing as political economy was still shaking off its pamphleteering past, he projects a near future when the “outline” of economics will be “clearly made out,” its “nomenclature” settled, its “principles” taught to children like arithmetic. That’s not a neutral forecast; it’s a bid for authority. If economics can present itself as a science with fixed terms and classroom-ready laws, it gains the cultural power that comes with seeming natural, objective, and above politics.
The phrasing is telling. “I trust” carries moral reassurance as much as prediction, a Victorian register of faith that smuggles in a preference: the world will be better once experts agree on the right categories. “Perhaps within the lives of some of us” adds a tantalizing deadline, turning a slow professionalization project into something like a generational mission. It invites readers to imagine themselves as witnesses to the moment economics graduates from debate to doctrine.
The subtext is also defensive. Early economists were accused of ideology dressed up as measurement. By emphasizing nomenclature and elementary instruction, Senior frames disagreement as a temporary glitch of youth rather than an enduring feature of a field that studies human conflict over scarce resources. In hindsight, the line reads as both aspirational and ironic: economics did become massively institutionalized, but its “fixed” language and “principles” never stopped being contested. The quote captures the founding ambition to make markets legible - and, in making them legible, to make them governable.
The phrasing is telling. “I trust” carries moral reassurance as much as prediction, a Victorian register of faith that smuggles in a preference: the world will be better once experts agree on the right categories. “Perhaps within the lives of some of us” adds a tantalizing deadline, turning a slow professionalization project into something like a generational mission. It invites readers to imagine themselves as witnesses to the moment economics graduates from debate to doctrine.
The subtext is also defensive. Early economists were accused of ideology dressed up as measurement. By emphasizing nomenclature and elementary instruction, Senior frames disagreement as a temporary glitch of youth rather than an enduring feature of a field that studies human conflict over scarce resources. In hindsight, the line reads as both aspirational and ironic: economics did become massively institutionalized, but its “fixed” language and “principles” never stopped being contested. The quote captures the founding ambition to make markets legible - and, in making them legible, to make them governable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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