Barkley Rosser wrote: >Greg, > The current situation is more extreme than what went on in the past. >In the past one would get people who were trained in math, or physics, or >engineering, who would then switch over to economics and import their >methods from their previous background. But they would actually switch >over formally to economics. Although I am not familiar with this literature, I can hazard a guess that econophysics might not be so bad and might actually be useful. Physics itself seems to be getting more metaphysical, and the behavior of any individual particle, like the behavior of any individual economic actor, is not actually knowable. Still, the development of systems of particles can be measured and known. I am reminded of the story about Werner Heisenberg, he of the uncertainty principle, who on graduating with a degree in the Classics, was deciding on whether to do graduate work in either physics or economics. He decided on physics because, he said, "I thought economics would be too hard." John C. M?daille