Thünen’s Isolated state: the original work

Abstract

Johann Heinrich von Thünen’s classic work, the Isolated state stays in the library of the great unread books. Thünen is mostly known from secondary and tertiary interpretations, which are sometimes superficial or misleading. Thünen’s the Isolated state has almost 700 pages, the most comprehensive German edition has 1260 pages, but the typical interpretation concentrates only on the first page which introduces the basic assumptions and the graphical presentation of the results. It is altogether three pages of the book, less than a three thousandth part of it. However, the methodology, the comparison of the theory and the empirics, the critical examination of the assumptions by Thünen are mostly neglected.

The aim of this contribution is the systematic reconstruction of Thünen’s theory in accordance with the original work. Thünen’s work is both theoretical, i.e. abstract and general, and applied, i.e. concrete, historical and descriptive. The theoretical character is attributable to the systematic and general examination of the influencing factors of land use. Since these factors are general and eternal categories of human economic activity, which are independent from the historical time and actual geographical space, the theory is applicable always and everywhere. Only the context, the actual manifestation of these general categories will be different in different times and spaces: transport costs, production technology, products, climatic circumstances, relative prices and so on.

Thünen was aware of the fact, that his model is an idealisation of the agricultural landuse pattern: “The abstraction from reality without which we cannot come to any scientific knowledge has several dangers, namely: (1) We separate in thought what is in fact mutually interrelated. (2) Our conclusions rest upon assumptions of which we are not clearly conscious and which we therefore do not make expressly, and we then consider as generally true what is true only under these specific assumptions. The history of economics gives us many striking examples.” (Thünen 1930, 407–408.) He examines thoroughly the differences between his idealisation and reality.