Comments and Questions

First of all,we would like to express our gratitude for all the comments and suggestions of both referees. The referee comments that the article deals with an interesting perspective on the use of text analysis and, precisely, that perspective is based on the using of a methodology traditionally alien to the history of economic thought research: econo-physics. As he says, econo-physics is, not so much the using of a statistical analysis, but the application of models coming from physics to economics: in particular, the turbulence concept is applied in physics to the chaotic motion of a fluid. The physical explanation of this behavior is the presence of turbulent eddies transmitting energy among them. The mathematical/statistics explanation of this transfer process can be accomplished by the fractal analysis. This type of analysis deals with the behavior in the different scales of this transition process (these scales are referred to the size of the turbulent eddies). In this sense, we can speak of monofractality or uniscaling (the same behavior for all the scales) and of multifractality or multiscaling (where this behavior, although similar, is not exactly the same in all the scales). The fractal analysis, that is to say, the search of similarity in the different scales of the process (autosimilarity) has been not only applied to the velocity of fluids, but also to many others processes of apparently chaotic or turbulent nature. This is the case with economics series, in which an analogy between energy transmission from one eddy to the other, formerly mentioned, and economic information transmission can be established (econophysics). The scaling analysis carried out in the work belongs to this type of fractal analysis usual in turbulent processes, in which the next value of the variable cannot be known. The variable used (frequency of appearance of one word in one page) is not an economic variable as such, but it contains information of an economics character, in the sense of the importance given by the author to the economic concept represented by the word. In any case, we agree with the referee that we need to clarify these aspects more, and to specify what is meant in the article by the idea of "methodology of turbulence". With regard to the consideration of economic texts as literature, we are trying to bring our approach closer to the rhetorical analysis of economics, which makes a textual analysis examining the text in itself -, the turn of the sentences and expressions of the text - and the author performance regarding his/her audience, instead of using the more political or theoretical analysis of the texts. Actually, Aragon and al (2006) used the concept of turbulence to characterize emotional instability because they saw that Van Gogh's works of art adhered to a pattern predicted by Kolmogorov's statistical theory. This interesting coincidence made them make an analogy with the turbulence of the artwork itself and the physical state of mind of the author, the same as our article makes an analogy between the physical state of mind of economic authors and their texts. The analogy, we think, is interesting and can make us deal with those states of mind that are out of reach now in physical terms. So, certainly, it is the physical time felt by the authors what makes them punctuate the text in one way or the other. This is what we mean with "state of mind" and "turbulent text". In this sense, the psycho-analysis dimension is used only in a neuropsychological way, meaning the measurement of a very specific result of the mind movements: an economic text. We do not mean that this perspective is the best way to capture the authors psyche; but it gives one more and innovative tool to analyse texts that we present for the consideration and discussion of the academic community. As the referee comments, the choice of the word "utility,value, labour and capital" is unplanned, as Jevons cite those words as the most important in economics - something that makes our results not scheduled beforehand and, then, we think that more robust - but we consider that these words are very important for the three authors, as they are the basis of their theories and the clue of their critique of political economy. Those words, due to the importance of their definition in a nascent political economy, did not have so many synonyms or association of words in that period. In this sense, we think that, as the words are considered pivotal in the political economy of the time, the fact that we use a translation must not affect so much the results of the frequency of their appearance. All these points, it is true, must be mentioned in the article. It is the concept of scale understood as the distance between pages of the appearance of words what makes the works of these three authors comparable. Indeed, the variable is expressed not in absolute, but in relative terms (difference of frequency between pages, comparing the frequency of appearance in a page with that in other page) and, if the analogy is allowed, it has more to do with the rhythm than with the music. Regarding the stability of data, figure 3, where the probability mass functions are represented, shows how the different scales share a same statistical framework, conferring a fractal structure to the process. Indeed, the process presents autosimilarity, though this autosimilarity is not perfect due to its intermittency (multifractality). It is in this sense that the sentence “a turbulent regime characterized by intermittency” has been used. Regarding the use of the word “persistent”, it is referred to the repetition in the number of times that a word is used. In scale 1, for instance, a high persistence indicates that this word (value, for example) is frequently used the same number of times in all the pages. In this case, the author is persistent, along the text, in the use of this word. The author can give greater or lesser importance to this word, but he does it always in the same way throughout the text. Finally, we agree with the referee that the concept of “information” should be explained in a more clear way in the article. Information is referred to the importance given by the author, in the moment of producing his work, to the concept represented by the word in question. The word “jumps” has the same meaning than “difference in the number of words”. Maybe it is not the correct word and it should be changed.