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Fri Mar 31 17:18:38 2006 |
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====================== HES POSTING ===================
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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