There is no better way of introducing this article than Léon Walras's first words in his influential work Elements of Pure Political Economy:

"The first thing that it is necessary to do, when beginning a course or an essay on political economy, is to define the science, its object, divisions, character and limits. I have no intention of avoiding this obligation, but I should warn you that it is more difficult and requires more time than it is supposed. The definition of political economy does not yet exist. Of all the available definitions, none has achieved the general and definitive consent that constitutes the sign of scientific truths. I shall mention and criticize the most interesting definitions, and I shall try to provide one. While completing this task, I shall have the opportunity of mentioning some names, book titles and dates that should be known.

Dealing with the concept and object of a science is trying to define it in the most harmonious way possible. Defining is clarifying limits, delimiting and determining some concepts. It is a proposition that manifests something unknown or that clarifies something confused, being therefore one of the ways of knowing together with division, argument and contemplation. This task is one of the fundamental ones of any scientific work and it allows to guide with broad strokes the conductive thread of education or investigation that has in the definition or definitions an important benchmark. However there is no agreement, by no means, on what it is that is done when defining. That is due to the fact that the concept of definition depends, remotely at least, on the concept of reality and, sooner, of the concept that one has of how the human mind reaches reality. In fact there are many types of definitions: nominal and real, etymological, essential, descriptive, by synonyms, analytic, systematic, operational... etc. The definition also has its laws, for example that it cannot be broader or narrower than that defined, that which is defined should not enter in the definition, that it should be clearer than that defined, that it should not be negative, that it should be brief... etc. A definition will be better or worse according to the degree of fulfilment of these laws.

Controversies about definition cover the whole spectrum of the history of thought. As an illustration we can distinguish between those who believe that the definition reaches the core, like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the rationalists, Hegel or the phenomenologues; those that sustain that the definition is merely arbitrary or prescriptive such as Hobbes, Russell, Quine or Carnap; or those that maintain that recourse to the definition is merely conceptual or linguistic like Guillermo of Ockham, John Stuart Mill or Moore.

There are definitions of economy for all tastes in the history of economic thought and in the most customary manuals. From Jacob Viner's most extravagant, saying that the economy is what economists do, that as we can see goes against one of the laws of good definition, to the one that maybe is more accepted and widespread these days, that the professor Robbins explained in his work An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932) where he said that the economy was the "science that studies human behaviour as a relationship between scarce ends and means that have alternative uses". Halfway between both we can locate some of the most well-worn in the manuals and that usually have a certain generally descriptive character. Marshall described the economy as the study of humanity in the ordinary activities of life. J. M. Keynes referred to Economic Theory pointing out that it is more a method than a doctrine, an apparatus (or discipline) of the mind, a technique of thinking that helps people that have to draw concrete conclusions. On the other hand, Lowe affirmed as late as 1965 that "The Economy maintains the provision of material means."

The question 'What is the Economy?' has been answered and is answered in a thousand different ways and so many times the answer is insufficient. This has led to remarkable methodological discussions trying to discover the "philosopher's stone" of the Economy. So much variety and discrepancy has led to certain scepticism among specialists regarding the topic that we are concerned with. G. Myrdal indicates in this way that these efforts are headed to be cunning, unnecessary and even undesirable; he pronounces moreover that the only concept that an economist does not need to define accurately is that of Economic Science. J. M. Keynes on the other hand boasts of a certain eclecticism and realism when affirming that a single definition is insufficient to demonstrate the nature of the Economy, Joan Robinson says that giving the words more exact definitions than the topic to which they refer does not present any advantage. Of this whole "abundance" that leads to a certain scepticism we can see, however, something positive that J. N. Keynes demonstrates in his The Scope and Method of Political Economy (1890): "it can be affirmed about the definition of Political Economy, as occurs with most other definitions, that the discussion that leads to it is more important than the particular formula ultimately selected."

Following this recommendation of J. Neville Keynes and having made these preventive appreciations I shall try to summarize and debate in some later articles the different contributions in this field on the part of the history of economic thought. I believe that from time to time we need to walk our thoughts through the contributions of classic economists and thinkers.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Gaceta de los Negocios, Saturday July 31st and Sunday August 1st 1993