Are we all supposed to set aside detailed inquiries into 'the business of every day life' and turn our attention wholly to the 'big picture'? There must be thousands of other economists like me who are diffident about our ability to add anything of value to the kind of conversation that Smith and Marx and Mill and Keynes and Hayek and Friedman are said to have promoted, and more modest in the scientific goals we set for ourselves. I hope that Paul's message is not that we are wasting our time. Anthony Waterman -----Original Message----- From: Paul Dudenhefer Sent: Monday, November 14, 2011 8:33 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [SHOE] Backhouse and Bateman, "Wanted: Worldly Philosophers" As we all know, Roger and Brad's column has generated all sorts of responses--many of them stimulating and illuminating in their own right--but it seems fair to remind everyone that the purpose of their article is to ask economists to engage again in the kind of big-picture thinking that Smith and Marx and Mill and Keynes and Hayek and Friedman engaged in. As they point out, the recent generations of economists have been trained to take the "dentistry" approach, for reasons that are not hard to understand. What Brad and Roger are calling for is for economists to return again to discussing what has become its fundamental subject, capitalism, developing a new vision of what capitalism is and means, and, as they state in their concluding sentence, "asking the hard questions that can shape a new vision of capitalism's potential." Yours sincerely, Paul -- Paul Dudenhefer Managing Editor, HOPE 213 Social Science Building Box 90097 Duke University Durham, NC 27708-0097 919-660-6899 www.dukeupress.edu http://hope.econ.duke.edu/