William Stanley Jevons 

FRS (/ˈdʒɛvənz/;[2] 1 September 1835 – 13 August

1882) was an English economist and logician.
Irving Fisher described Jevons's book A General Mathematical Theory of
Political Economy (1862) as the start of the mathematical method in
economics.[3] It made the case that economics as a science concerned
with quantities is necessarily mathematical.[4] In so doing, it expounded
upon the "final" (marginal) utility theory of value. Jevons' work, along with
similar discoveries made by Carl Menger in Vienna (1871) and by Léon
Walras in Switzerland (1874), marked the opening of a new period in the
history of economic thought. Jevons's contribution to the marginal
revolution in economics in the late 19th century established his reputation
as a leading political economist and logician of the time.
Jevons broke off his studies of the natural sciences in London in 1854 to
work as an assayer in Sydney, where he acquired an interest in political
economy. Returning to the UK in 1859, he published General Mathematical
Theory of Political Economy in 1862, outlining the marginal utility theory of
value, and A Serious Fall in the Value of Gold in 1863. For Jevons, the
utility or value to a consumer of an additional unit of a product is inversely
related to the number of units of that product he already owns, at least
beyond some critical quantity.
Jevons received public recognition for his work on The Coal
Question (1865), in which he called attention to the gradual exhaustion of
Britain's coal supplies and also put forth the view that increases in energy
production efficiency leads to more, not less, consumption.[5]:7f, 161f This view
is known today as the Jevons paradox, named after him. Due to this
particular work, Jevons is regarded today as the first economist of some
standing to develop an 'ecological' perspective on the economy.[6]:295f [7]:147 [5]:2
The most important of his works on logic and scientific methods is
his Principles of Science (1874),[8] as well as The Theory of Political
Economy (1871) and The State in Relation to Labour (1882). Among his
inventions was the logic piano, a mechanical computer.

Jevons's number[edit]
Jevons wrote in his 1874 book Principles of Science: "Can the reader say
what two numbers multiplied together will produce the number
8,616,460,799? I think it unlikely that anyone but myself will ever
know."[22] This became known as Jevons's number and was factored by
Charles J. Busk in 1889,[23] Derrick Norman Lehmer in 1903,[24] and later on
a pocket calculator by Solomon W. Golomb.[25][26] It is the product of two
prime numbers, 89,681 and 96,079.

Geometry[edit]
One of Jevons's contemporaries, Hermann von Helmholtz, who was
interested in non-Euclidean geometry,[27] discussed two groups of two-
dimensional creatures with one group living in the plane while the other
living in the surface of a sphere. He asserted that since these creatures
were embedded in two dimensions, they would develop a planar version
of Euclidean geometry, but that since the nature of these surfaces were
different, they would arrive at very different versions of this geometry. He
then extended this argument into three dimensions, noting that this raises
fundamental questions of the relationship of spatial perception to
mathematical truth.[28][29][30]
Jevons made an almost immediate response to this article. While
Helmholtz focused on how humans perceived space, Jevons focused on
the question of truth in geometry. Jevons agreed that while Helmholtz's
argument was compelling in constructing a situation where
the Euclidean axioms of geometry would not apply, he believed that they
had no effect on the truth of these axioms. Jevons hence makes the
distinction between truth and applicability or perception, suggesting that
these concepts were independent in the domain of geometry.
Jevons did not claim that geometry was developed without any
consideration for spatial reality. Instead, he suggested that his geometric
systems were representations of reality but in a more fundamental way that
transcends what one can perceive about reality.[31] Jevons claimed that
there was a flaw in Helmholtz's argument relating to the concept of
infinitesimally small. This concept involves how these creatures reason
about geometry and space at a very small scale, which is not necessarily
the same as the reasoning that Helmholtz assumed on a more global scale.
Jevons claimed that the Euclidean relations could be reduced locally in the
different scenarios that Helmholtz created and hence the creatures should
have been able to experience the Euclidean properties, just in a different
representation. For example, Jevons claimed that the two-dimensional
creatures living on the surface of a sphere should be able to construct the
plane and even construct systems of higher dimensions and that although
they may not be able to perceive such situations in reality, it would reveal
fundamental mathematical truths in their theoretical existence.[32]
In 1872, Helmholtz gave a response to Jevons, who claimed that Helmholtz
failed to show why geometric truth should be separate from the reality of
spatial perception. Helmholtz criticized Jevons's definition of truth and in
particular, experiential truth. Helmholtz asserts that there should be a
difference between experiential truth and mathematical truth and that these
versions of truth are not necessarily consistent. This conversation between
Helmholtz and Jevons was a microcosm of an ongoing debate between
truth and perception in the wake of the introduction of non-Euclidean
geometry in the late 19th century.[33]