Allin writes: > There is a well known passage in which Thorstein Veblen ridicules the > neoclassical conception of the economic agent. So far as I remember > he uses phrases like "a quivering globule of desire" and "lightning > calculator of pleasures and pains". Can anyone help me out with the > precise citation for these remarks? > > Thanks. For aficionados of classic phrases in political economy, the full passage goes as follows: The hedonistic conception of man is that of a lightning calculator of pleasures and pains, who oscillates like a homogeneous globule of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift him about the area, but leave him intact. He has neither antecedent nor consequent. He is an isolated, definitive human datum, in stable equilibrium except for the buffets of the impinging forces that displace him in one direction or the other. Self-imposed in elemental space, he spins symmetrically about his own spiritual axis until the parallelogram of forces bears down upon him. I got this from Max Lerner's introduction to The Portable Veblen. Unfortunately Lerner is not forthcoming with citations, but I would guess it comes from the collection of Veblen's essays called THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN MODERN CIVILIZATION. Gil Skillman
