Economics as Plausible Conjecture
从语言和文学视角考察经济学，发现古典经济学形成期与小说等新文学形式有亲缘关系，其典型方法“合理推测”通过虚构模型捕捉经济现实，在魁奈和斯密作品中体现并影响后世。
The examination of economics from the standpoint of language and literature, part of the “linguistic turn” in economic methodology, may be extended and inverted by setting the literary elements of economics in historical perspective. In so doing, it will emerge that in the formative period of classical economics, when the line between the literary and the scientific was blurred, there was an affinity between economics and new forms of literature, especially the novel, that helped shape the characteristic method of economics as “plausible conjecture.” Through plausible conjecture, fictions, as thought-experiments or models, are used to capture and depict essential elements of economic reality. This approach is evident in the work of François Quesnay and central to that of Adam Smith, setting the mold for later economic thinkers.