UNIVERSITY MILITANT 88
UNIVERSITY MILITANT 83
5. Every economic survey discusses Malthus, but why not also Darwin? Show that his doctrine, commonly thought restrictedly biological, is really and fundamentally the projection of current mechanical improvements,
and their associated economic theories, of competition, etc., upon the evolution of the organic and human world. Can any exception be taken to this view, that Darwinism was and is the very flower of classic economic thought, applied to other fields ?
6. Estimate the bearing of later biologists upon economic theory, e.g., Weismann, Kropotkin, Bergson. Returning to the psychological treatment of economics — how far can the traditional doctrine of hedonism be maintained in face of the criticisms of evolutionists, e.g. that progressive processes, from birth and teething
onwards, are frequently painful, while those of disease, vice, and deterioration are frequently pleasurable, e.g. spes pthisica, drunkenness, opium-eating, etc. ? Does not the introduction of a future element involve the
replacement of the hedonist theory by a distinctly evolutionary one ?
7. Give references to economists who have endeavoured to clear up the position of economics within the general field of sociology. Also compare the fields of sociology and biology, with their respective subsciences ; so as to make the above position of economics still more clear, as by comparison with the economics of animal life and societies.
8. How can it be clearly explained to the student that economics is related to (a) Geography, (b) Anthropology, (c) Elementary Psychology, as of experience, pleasure and pain, etc., (d) to a deeper Psychology of Ideals— of Philosophy, Science and Religion, Doctrine and Symbol, of Imaginative and Creative Art? How far have recent economic schools encouraged (or discouraged) these ?
