All sciences engage in mythmaking when it comes to their own history--this has been well known since Kuhn and since amply documented.--ES
 
BOF Research Professor, Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Ghent, B-9000, Belgium. Phone: (31)-(0)6-15005958
Fall 2011: Visiting Associate Professor, UC, Santa Barbara
http://www.newappsblog.com/
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=649484
http://philpapers.org/s/Eric%20Schliesser

From: Rob Tye <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 6:13 AM
Subject: Re: [SHOE] "Inside Job" and code of ethics for economists

Dear Eric

It seems as though you might agree that, as the territory economics occupies
rest hard up against politics, applied economics morphs seamlessly into
political matters, and the murky waters such activities occupy.  As a
citizen I deplore political misuse of economic theories, and I wish good
speed to the judiciary and legislature in tackling the very difficult issues
this raises, but I do not think my own little knowledge concerning economic
history has much to offer in assistance.

What I do have to say regarding ethics is to do with the narratives
concerning historical money use, offered by both bullionists and cartalists,
which quite often seem to depart from the facts as we know them. 

Have you by any chance ever looked into a book by the anthropologist Donald
E Brown, “Hierarchy, History and Human Nature”?  He outlines seemingly
profound distinctions between those “open” human societies who strove to
create objective history, and those “closed” human societies who perpetuated
only myths. 

It seems to me an interesting thesis, and perhaps relevant to the issue I
pointed to.  The bending of fact to make a pleasing narrative seems to me
akin to myth making, a tribalistic and quasi religious activity, which is
anti-scientific, and regrettably so.

regards

Rob Tye

York, UK

personal web site:  http://www.earlyworldcoins.com