1. Paul A. Samuelson, Economics, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 3. A more concise, but essentially similar definition is given by Bronfenbrenner: ‘Economics is the systematic study of social adjustment to, and management of, the scarcity of goods and resources’. Martin Bronfenbrenner, ‘A “Middlebrow” Introduction to Economic Methodology’, in Sherman Roy Krupp (ed.), The Structure of Economic Science: Essays on Methodology (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 6.
2. A more elaborated definition may be found in Neil J. Smelser, (ed.), Sociology: An Introduction, second edition, (New York: Wiley, 1973).
3. Wassily Leontief, ‘Mathematics in Economics’, in Essays in Economics: Theories and Theorizing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 23. For a recent discussion of utility functions and ‘economic man’, see Jerome Rothenberg, ‘Values and Value Theory in Economics’, in Krupp (ed.), The Structure of Economic Science, op. cit., p. 6.
4. Unless, in fact, the utility function is characterized in such general and indeterminate terms that every act can be characterized as rational by definition.
5. Talcott Parsons and Neil J. Smelser, Economy and Society (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1956), p. 175.