John Neville Keynes

John Neville Keynes (born August 31, 1852 – died November 15, 1949) was a British philosopher and economist, famous for his work on non-categorical syllogism, and his attempt to unify methodologies of Austrian and German schools of economics. He is mostly remembered today as the father of John Maynard Keynes.

Life

John Neville Keynes was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, the son of John Keynes and his wife Anna Maynard Neville. His father was a successful horticulturist, specializing in dahlias and roses. He also served as a town mayor in 1876-77. Keynes were active Congregationalists, and have tried to raise their children in the spirit of the faith.

Keynes attended Amersham Hall School, where he showed aptitude for classics and mathematics. In 1869 he won Gilchrist Scholarship to University College, London, the school specialized to teach Nonconformist students, who were excluded by the Religious Test Acts from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. After receiving his B.A. with honors in 1870, Keynes somehow managed to enroll at the University of Cambridge, in his third attempt. He was awarded a mathematical scholarship to Pembroke College.

Keynes eventually decided to switch his major to Moral Sciences, and graduated with the B.Sc. in 1875 and an M.A. in 1876. The same year he became a fellow of Pembroke, and of University College, London, coaching in logic and political economy. Influenced by his former teacher, Alfred Marshall, Keynes became interested in economics, but still remained focused primarily on logic.

In March 1881 Keynes was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Local Examinations and Lectures Syndicate, and in 1892, he became a secretary, holding the post until 1910. In 1884, he was appointed University Lecturer in Moral Sciences, a post which he held until 1911. He also served as Chairman of the Special Board for Moral Sciences (1906-12) and as Chairman of the Special Board for Economics and Politics (1908-20).

In 1882 Keynes married Florence Ada Brown, a daughter from a prosperous Congregationalist family. The couple settled down just on the outskirts of Cambridge, where they bought a house. Their first son Maynard was born in 1883. Florence later became a prominent social reformer and the first female Councillor of Cambridge Borough Council, and its Mayor in 1932.

In 1884 Keynes published Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic, based on the lectures he gave to his students. The book became an important pedagogical textbook in formal logic, going through four editions, last in 1906. In 1888, Alfred Marshall tried to persuade Keynes to accept the position of a lecturer in economics at the University of Oxford, but Keynes refused. He published in 1891 the Scope and Method of Political Economy, the work which earned him the degree of the Doctor of Science, awarded to him the same year.

In 1892, Keynes became a Member of the Council of the Senate, the governing body of the University of Cambridge. He was elected as Registrary in 1910, and held that office until 1925, the year he retired.

Keynes outlived his elder son Maynard by three years and died in 1949 in Cambridge, England. He was 97 years old. His wife Florence was also 97 when she died.

Work

Philosopher

Keynes published his first book in 1884, under the title Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic. The book was based on his lectures given to his students, and was full of interesting and ingenious problems in formal logic for the students to work on. He defended formal logic, in its pure form, against the influences of philosophical logic of Kant or Hegel, and empirical logic of John Stuart Mill.

Keynes also elaborated on the concept of non-categorical syllogistic, a form of logical inference which uses whole propositions as its units. While categorical syllogisms use premises and looks at their internal structure to make a conclusion, non-categorical syllogisms deal with the values of proposition in relation to other propositions. Propositions are viewed as single, non-decomposable units, with their internal true value. Non-categorical syllogisms can be either hypothetical or disjunctive, to which some add a class of copulative syllogisms.

Economist

Keynes was a close friend and former student of Alfred Marshall, an icon of British economics for half a century. Keynes however didn’t strictly follow Marshall’s ideas, and it is said that he disappointed Marshall by failing to live up to his expectations.

Keynes published his first greater work in 1891, under the title Scope and Method of Political Economy. In it he tried to find the solution for the methodological difference which had stirred much conflict in the 1870s and 1880s. At a time, German-speaking world was engaged in the “Methodenstreit” ("battle of methods"), between the Austrian economic school led by Carl Menger, and the German school led by economist Gustav Schmoller. Austrians insisted on a deductive approach and stressed the importance of pure theory, while Germans emphasized the importance of inductive studies.

Keynes adopted a syncretistic position. He believed that the “Methodenstreit” could be solved by taking both inductive and deductive methods into consideration, and making a “unified” model. He claimed that both induction and deduction were required to understand how economy functions. Inductive reasoning provided the general premises needed for the deduction to take place, and deduction created general laws which had to be tested by inductive procedures.

Keynes thus divided economics into:

1. "positive economics" (the study of what is, and the way the economy works),
2. "normative economics" (the study of what the economy should be), and the
3. "applied economics" (the art of economics, or economic policy)

The art of economics relates the lessons learned in positive economics to the normative goals determined in normative economics. It generally means that the goal of applied economics is to find how to come from positive to normative economics.

Legacy

John Neville Keynes was a noted economist and a philosopher, who is unfairly forgotten today. His work in philosophy remains mostly noted for his elaboration on non-categorical syllogisms, while in the area of economics, he tried to synthesize deductive and inductive approaches to economics in order to bring together the Austrian School of Carl Menger and the German school of Gustav Schmoller.

John Neville Keynes is mostly remembered today however, as the father of his famous children:

• John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), the economist.
• Geoffrey Keynes (1887-1982), a surgeon.
• Margaret Neville Keynes (1890-1974), who married Archibald Hill (winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize for Physiology) in 1913.

Publications

• Keynes, John Neville. 1884. Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic. London: Macmillan
• Keynes, John Neville. 2007 (original published in 1891). The Scope and Method of Political Economy. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 1430491132

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• BookRags.com. John Neville Keynes. Retrieved on June 6, 2007, <http://www.bookrags.com/research/keynes-eoph/>
• Broad, C. D. 1950. Obituary: Dr. J. N. Keynes (1852-49). Economic Journal, 60, 403-407
• Deane, Phyllis. 1987. John Neville Keynes. In Eatwell, J., Milgate, M., and Newman, P., (Eds.), New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0333372352
• Tullberg, Rita M. Economists' Papers - Series Two: The Papers of John Neville Keynes, 1864-1917, from Cambridge University Library. Adam Matthews Publications on http://www.adam-matthew-publications.co.uk. Retrieved on June 6, 2007, <http://www.adam-matthew-publications.co.uk/digital_guides/economists_papers_series_two_john_neville_keynes/Editorial-Introduction.aspx>

External links

• Economist Papers - John Neville Keynes (1852-1949) – Collection of Keynes’s papers and his biography on Adam Matthew Publications website
• John Neville Keynes – Biography on BookRags.com
• The Scope and Method of Political Economy – Full-text Keynes’s work from 1891
• Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic – Full-text Keynes’s work from 1884

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