The Temperature of the Brain
分析了Edgeworth在1881年如何试图为效用测量寻找心理基础，借用温度计类比来量化快乐感受，并探讨了随后关于心理学在经济学中作用的批评如何促使他从基数效用转向序数效用。
In 1881, Francis Ysidro Edgeworth attempted to provide a solid psychological basis for utility measurement. I will show that Edgeworth’s main struggle was to provide a possible measurement scale for a feeling—pleasure—using some kind of physical magnitude that would have allowed both intra and interpersonal comparisons, thus justifying the use of mathematical techniques to answer welfare issues. Edgeworth found inspiration in a similar quest, the invention of temperature, which had permitted the transformation of a feeling, “coldness,” into a physical quantity, temperature. Edgeworth faced two kinds of criticisms: concerning the use of psychological notions in economics and concerning the nature of utility itself. Both criticisms were also stated in terms of the thermodynamic metaphor, and the thermometer analogy played a major role in the exchanges. Following those criticisms and his own analysis, Edgeworth would move from a ratio to an ordinal understanding of utility, despite never abandoning the idea that economics should be psychologically grounded.