Margaret Schabas

Margaret Schabas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. She is renowned for her work on economics and the way in which this modern discipline drew upon - and impinged upon - other disciplines, notably mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics. In 1990, Professor Schabas published her first book A World Ruled by Number: William Stanley Jevons and the Rise of Mathematical Economics (Princeton, 1990), in which she explored the transformation of political economy into a mathematical science. Since then she has published widely on issues relating to the history of economics and, in particular, on the economic ideas of David Hume. In 2008, she co-edited the volume David Hume’s Political Economy (Routledge, 2008) and in 2020, she co-authored the volume A Philosopher’s Economist: Hume and the Rise of Capitalism (Chicago, 2020). Her collaborator on both of these book projects was Carl Wennerlind, Professor at Barnard College and Columbia University, who also conducted this interview with Margaret Schabas on her life and career in academia. Listen to the interview here.