In his 1947 essay, Tjalling Koopmans criticized the development of an empirical science that had no theoretical basis, what he referred to as measurement without theory. The controversy over the status of relations based on mere statistical inference has not ceased since then. Instead of looking for the contemporary consequences, however, I will inquire into its early beginnings. As early as the 1900s, Walras, Pareto and Juglar exchanged views on the status of theory and its relation to economic data. These private exchanges acquired the status of scientific controversy in the aftermath of the First World War, with the dissemination of Pareto's work. It is precisely this moment that I will try to grasp, when engineers began to read and write pure economic treatises, questioning the relation between theory and empirical problems, the nature of their project and the expectations that the subsequent development of economics has tried to fulfill.

Cournot Centre session devoted to the transformations that took place in mathematical economics during the interwar period.[-]