I'll be d____d! Heroes of Economic Science! Equal to Galileo!

I'm cruisin' along through Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk's Capital and Interest... And it's an easy cruise, let me tell you - like ridin' in a '72 El Dorado convertible, top down, on Hollywood Boulevard on a late September evening. The guy could write! (Or the translator could translate.) But, back to my point, I'm cruising along, when this mine explodes in my mind:

The deliverances [by which he means, the writings, previously elaborated, in which the two gentlemen about to be named advanced economic theory with regard to "the problem of interest" dramatically, ed.] of Calvin and Molinaeus remained for a long time quite by themselves, and the reason of this is easily understood. To pronounce that to be right which the Church, the law, and the learned world had condemned with one voice, and opposed with arguments drawn from all sources, required not only a rare independence of intellect, but a rare strength of character which did not shrink from suspicion and persecution. The fate of the leaders in this movement showed clearly enough that there was cause for fear. Not to mention Calvin, who, indeed, had given the Catholic world quite other causes of offence, Molinaeus had much to suffer; he himself was exiled, and his book, carefully and moderately as it was written, was put on the Index. Nevertheless the book made its way, was read, repeated, and published again and again, and so scattered a seed destined to bear fruit in the end.

Of course you don't think of John Calvin as being a hero of economics, but he seems to have been the originator of the thought the Molinaeus, a lawyer, developed. I should quote the parable of Calvin's that Molinaeus quotes in his own book.

A rich man who has plenty of landed property and general income, but little ready money, applies for a money loan to one who is not so wealthy, but happens to have a great command over ready money. The lender could with the money purchase land for himself, or he could request that the land bought with his money
be hypothecated to him till the debt is wiped out. If, instead of doing so, he contents himself with the interest, the fruit of the money, how should this be blameworthy when the much harder bargain is regarded as fair?

I can't improve on Boehm-Bawerk's explication of their point - or points, as it may be - of view, particularly as I haven't read them. But my point is that these two men have made as much of a difference to economic history as Galileo made to physics and astronomy and the technology derived from his contributions to pure science - and, thus, perhaps as much of a difference in the modern world - in our standard of living - as Galileo.

Heroes!!

Let's sing their praises!