Obscured from Us by His Own Talent Elsewhere: Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) or ‘Every Man His Own Economist’

Abstract

Abstract Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) has been characterized as ‘a biologist, sociologist, botanist, geographer, urban planner, educator, founder of museums, schools, and institutions, leader of meetings and associations, poet, and guru’. Less often remarked on, he also had something to say on economics. It is this oft-neglected aspect of his thought with which this paper deals. Although not formally qualified in any of the fields in which he was later to play a leading role, and certainly not in economics/political economy, he contributed as much in terms of papers read and publications as anyone else in the crucial decade of professionalization prior to the formation of the British Economic Association and the appearance of its Journal; moreover, although some of his views might today be considered to have been eccentric, he nonetheless anticipated, for example, the application of the natural and physical sciences to economics.