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Date: | Tue Nov 28 09:20:20 2006 |
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Robin Neill wrote:
> "Such uninformed essentialist proclamations", be they
>what they are, do have a bearing on the history of Economics.
>
> The kind of "theorizing in the abstract" to which Medaille
>refers is not the kind of theory with which the practice of
>Economics begins.
>
> Practice in Economics begins with a complex situation
>that is troublesome. It tries to abstract the elements that bear on
>the trouble in an attempt to find a way to eliminate them.
>
> It is only as an after thought that the entailed abstraction is
>elevated to universal and eternal validity. This process of
>transmogrification from the here and now to the everywhere and
>forever may be warranted, but I conjecture that usually it is not.
Exactly, and that is why the study of history is
so crucial to a proper study of economics, or
indeed to any humane science. Human ideas arise
from a response to particular historical
circumstances and it is difficult to understand
them without understanding the cultural milieu
that produced them. An author advances a
proposition x in preference to rival propositions
y and z, and casts his thoughts in a form he
feels best suited to answer y and z. It is really
impossible to understand x without understanding
y and z. Even if x really is a universal
proposition, it is normally expressed in terms
that are valid mostly within a particular culture
or time. Too often students receive economic
propositions in the form of received and
ahistorical dogmas that are beyond question. The
inevitable result is that students lose the
practice of thinking historically and end up
trying to fit reality to the dogma rather than
the dogma to the reality. That is what I mean by theorizing in the abstract.
This is not to say that there are no universals,
but man reaches the universal only through the
particular, which is to say through history and culture.
John C. Medaille
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