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Michael Gibons wrote: 
 
>But why is your point so resisted by economists?  It seems to me (as an 
>pseudo outsider) that economists seem more interested in being like 
>physicists than, say biologists.  That is, they want to believe that what 
>they are studying has ALWAYS been there, and it is just a question of 
>finding the right method/theory.  If one looks at biology, one gets a 
>different image of knowledge.  If you ask why most male human beings are 
>larger than most female human beings, the immediate explanation is genetic 
>and hormonal makeup.  But if you ask how that genetic and hormonal make up 
>came about, the explanation lies in evolution (i.e. history).  It seems to 
>me that economics could use more history.  Unfortunately, from what I am 
>able to gleen from this forum, they consider that problematic, and when 
>they do approach history, it is rife with a contextual clumsiness that is 
>almost embarassing (this is getting harsher than I prefer). 
> 
 
I agree. I think that some of economists' clumsiness with history is sheer 
ignorance. I also think that some of it is a belief that we (economists, 
that is) are primarily engaged in a *normative* and not a *positive* 
enterprise: spelling out and developing the consequences of scarcity, of 
maximizing objective functions under scarcity-imposed constraints, and of 
the usefulness or uselessness of particular institutions as social 
calculating mechanisms for solving such problems. 
 
Ask someone engaged in that *normative* enterprise what they think of 
"embeddedness," and they will say that it is irrelevant. 
 
Brad De Long 
 
 
 
 
 
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