This article investigates the scientific practices—and their transformations across time—of the physiocrats in relation to their social background. Our contention is that, in this regard, the physiocratic movement can be broken down in two successive creative communities: The writing...

In this article, we show that Quesnay, while himself devoted to a major analytical effort to create what was at the time, like today, assessed as an original and far-reaching social theory, was also very much concerned with the development of a systematic empirical inquiry of French economy and...

The publication in 1765 of Nicolas Baudeau’s work Idées d’un citoyen sur les besoins, les droits et les devoirs des vrais pauvres is the starting point of an analysis of social misery. Baudeau classifies poverty: poverty by age, poverty by disease, poverty due to accidents of life. This...

L'antiphysiocratie des saint-simoniens peut paraître assez naturelle. En effet, une doctrine saint-simonienne réputée pour son industrialisme utopiste ne pouvait, semble t-il, que s'opposer à ce que Smith a appelé le "système agricole". Cette interprétation, sans être totalement...