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In a message dated 97-09-18 23:32:33 EDT, Tony writes: 
 
<< Lists of people who have complained about the state of the subject seem  
 to me to be of limited interest in themselves. << 
 
Calling these 'complaints' is a bit of a spin.  I think what Neil and I are 
talking about are substantive identifications of explanatory and logical 
deficiency/problems within contemporary economic practice made by top 
economists.  These deficiencies are often found to be closely linked with  
what folks have identified as sociological pathologies in the profession. 
  
 << 1. We all have a grouse from time to time don't we? >> 
 
In every case that I can think of you find top economists making substantive 
arguments .. you don't find 'grousing'. 
 
>> Neil Buchanan's  original post remarked that it was particularly  
 economists over the age  of 60 who were prone to complain. << 
 
Again, you find substantive criticisms and identifications of logical and 
explanatory deficiencies, you don't find 'complaining'.  And many of 
these substantive arguments are generated out of insights and understandings 
developed well before these folk had the 'misfortune' of finding themselves 
over the age of 60.  ;-) 
 
>> Don't you find that (some) older people in all walks of life complain  
that things aren't what they used to be? << 
 
Again, to characterize the substantive identifications of logical and 
explanatory deficiency in major portions of contemporary economic practice 
as 'complaining' mischaracterizes what is actually going on. 
 
>> It is when the young people are dissatisfied that you need to  
 worry.  << 
 
It's time to start worrying, if anything like what Colander, McCloskey, 
Clower, and others report is anything close to being true. 
  
 >>  2. Isn't a good researcher perennially dissatisfied with the existing  
 state of knowledge? << 
 
The substantive identifications of explanatory and logical deficiency in much 
of contemporary practice, if valid, are not of the kind which can go away, 
they are inherent in the strategies themselves for understanding the 
phenomena 
at hand. 
 
>> That is the motive to try to improve it. << 
 
It helps to get a better idea how to improve things when a better and more 
widely rounded identification of the nature of the problem has been made. 
 Getting a sense of all the dimensions of the problem from various angles,  
as you get from Neil's project is a good and necessary start. 
 
>>  What are these people dissatisfied about? << 
 
This is an important question to ask -- and to take seriously. 
 
>> Are they all saying the same thing? << 
 
It takes some work to see the commonality of various substantive 
identifications of deficiency -- as well as the differences between them. 
 
>> Is  it 'not enough people are working in my field and citing my papers'? 
<< 
 
It's almost never this, as far as I've ever seen. 
  
>>  3. Such grouses need a date and a context attached. << 
 
Again, the context is almost never 'grousing' -- usually the context is 
in reflecting on the state of the profession, such as in Nobel lectures or 
in Presidential addresses, or personal autobiographies, or in attempts 
to understand the explanatory strategy and logical status of economics. 
Alternatively they are in reflections on the serious problems and 
deficiencies of contemporary practice, made in attempts to identify and  
make sense of what hasgone wrong, or where earlier promise has failed to  
pay off. 
 
>> We are historians, aren't we? >> 
 
The task/problem is larger than history.  But you are right, historical 
context helps greatly in gettting a broader sense of what has been  
identified as a deficiency, and how this came about .. although history  
itself often doesn't give us the why -- which is given instead by the  
material itself -- after all, we are scientists, aren't we? 
 
>> My memory says that in the 1970s there was quite a widespread feeling  
that there was something wrong, but that it has declined sharply. >> 
 
It began with Hicks, Friedman, & Leijonhufvud in the late 1960's didn't it? 
But this is only one aspect of the story. 
 
>> In the 1970s people were complaining about general  
 equilibrium (GE) theory, then seen as the pinnacle of the subject. << 
 
The big story was the 'complaining' about Keynes, as I read the history -- 
and part of the 'complaint' had to do with the compatibility of the micro 
story economists were teaching in the morning with the macro story they  
were teaching in the afternoon.  
 
>> Now,  no one cares about GE theory one way or the other - the  
action is elsewhere. << 
 
One common 'complaint' you find increasingly today is the sense  
that, rather than being driven by explanatory success, the profession 
of economics inceasingly takes a course dictated by intellectual 
fashion -- evidence of a lack of cognitive constraints on practice capable 
of leading to lasting achievements that won't simply fall victim to the 
latest technical fad. 
 
>> Is the incidence of complaining rising or falling? How does it compare  
with other fields? << 
 
The only fields I have a sense for outside of economics are Darwinian 
biology and philosophy.  There is nothing like what you find in economics 
to be found in Darwinian biology -- the sense in Darwinian biology is 
always that a correctable intellectual error has been made that careful 
reflection can allow us to avoid.  By contrast, in the hallway conversation 
of philosophers you hear a lot which sounds very like the identifications  
of fundamental explanatory and logical deficiency you find in the reflections 
of economists about contemporary economic practice.  Now and again, 
as it does among economists, this hallway talk makes its way into  
the journals.  The critique often sounds very familiar.  Talk of journals and 
contemporary practice being driven by technique or a conceptual analysis &  
counter-example game, the discipline bouncing from one fad to another,  
generating no significant or lasting insights.  And you have philosophers who 
have been through a few cycles of these fads, with a more mature  
understanding of the cognitive picture which drive smuch of contemporary  
practice, stepping back to point out the inherent explanatory & logical  
deficiencies that lead to the wheel-spinning of so much of the  
contemporary literature.  The account at this stage is substantive and  
general in nature.  Think of Wittgenstein looking at the contents of  
philosophical journals over the last 4 decades.  The state of things  
breeds a perceptable bit of cynicism not unlike that wiffed in the self- 
reports of economists -- a cynicism I've never wiffed among the Darwinian 
biologists. 
  
Greg Ransom 
Dept. of Social Science 
MiraCost College 
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