Is there a language which is adequate to describe our own economy? In this volume, Michel Verdon undertakes a path-breaking analysis of the three major paradigms in economics: Marxian economics, neo-classical economics and Keynesian economics. Each of these, he argues, has an inherent cosmology, and in the case of both Marxian and neo-classical economics these preclude the development of a language which can accurately describe and analyse an economy.

Born in Montréal, Michel Verdon studied anthropology at the Université de Montréal and at Cambridge University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in1975. He taught at Cambridge from 1979 to 1984 and is now teaching in the Department of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal. His research interest in the epistemological problems plaguing the study of society resulted in the publication in Paris of his own theoretical manifesto, Contre la culture (Edition des Archives Contemporaines).

Introduction; Part 1 A Background to the Neoclassical Cosmology; Part 2 PROBING THE NEOCLASSICAL COSMOLOGY; Part 3 STRANGE COSMOLOGICAL BEDFELLOWS; Part 4 FROM COSMOLOGY TO LANGUAGE; Part 5 KEYNES'S ECONOMICS: WHAT KIND OF REVOLUTION?; Part 6 KEYNES AND SPECULATION: ARISTOTLE REVISITED; Part 7 MORE SUBSTANCE AND TRANSACTIONS; Part 8 FROM A GALILEAN COSMOLOGY TO A GALILEAN ECONOMICS; Part 9 CONCLUSION;