----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 10:34
PM
Subject: RE: Sexy stuff (was Re:
economics)
So Arthur in your last statement:
> For those who remain angry
with econonomics/economists , try this URL
Was this an antidote to your
complaint or an example or what you didn't like?
I assumed the former while Keith
assumed the latter.
Ray Evans Harrell
AC
The
URL suggested was just a way to show that there are whole lot of people out
there who are trying to reform economic theory, working from inside the
discipline. I don't think such efforts will succeed in reforming the
"discipline".
Economics should return to its roots: Political
economy and institutional economics. While trying to be a "real"
science, economics gave away much of its power to understand and
educate.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ray
Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, January 31,
2002 7:12 PM
To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM; Keith Hudson
Cc:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Sexy stuff (was Re:
economics)
I have been busy for the last few days but I
didn't want to let this get by.
I've been re-reading and re-thinking three
books on linguistics from several years back when I use to go to parties and
have discussions at Rockefeller University in the home of Robert Jarvella
whose wife at the time was a wonderful flute player. Jarvella
was the first to help me think about my Cherokee English as we sat and
talked about different ways of thinking about language and how language
shapes thought.
That extended to the diction used by
professional performing artists where we could be saying one thing and have
our audience arrive at the polar opposite interpretation from a simple
observation of the performance. Not unlike the opinions of the
great Vietnam war photographers whose pictures changed the American putlic's
attitude towards the war to the opposite conclusion of the photographers
themselves. On a couple of occasions, good people who were
supporters of the American side, ended up having their lives ruined by an
interpretation of a picture that was at odds with who they were and how they
did the job required.
Diction, or the performance of meaning in a
language, is the root of all communication. I would recommend,
for fun if nothing else, Wallace L. Chafe's "Meaning and the Structure of
Language" (Chicago); "Psycholinguistics", selected papers, by
Roger Brown (Free Press); and one I'm just beginning to crack on these
issues "Introduction to the Theory of Grammar" by van Riemsdijk &
Williams (MIT).
So Arthur in your last statement:
> For those who remain angry with
econonomics/economists , try this URL
Was this an antidote to your complaint or an
example or what you didn't like?
I assumed the former while Keith assumed the
latter.
Ray Evans Harrell
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 1:56
AM
Subject: Sexy stuff (was Re:
economics)
> Hi Arthur,
>
> At
11:56 29/01/02 -0500, you wrote:
> (AC)
>
<<<<
> As a Ph.D. economist I almost never speak economics
stuff with economists.
> It becomes theoretical or theological
all too soon and thus quite
> boring/frustrating.
>
> For
those who remain angry with econonomics/economists , try this URL
>
> Post Autistic Economics
> <http://www.paecon.net/>
>
>>>>
>
> I sympathise! These "post-autistic
economists" write pretty indigestible
> stuff. Correction: very
indigestible stuff. However, bear in mind where
> it's coming from.
Their Post-autistic Economics Newsletter is really not
> about
economics at all. It doesn't contain a single positive idea. It's
all
> about protest -- which is what the French have been very good at
ever since
> 1789.
>
> Their papers remind me of Robert
Solow's charge against Milton Freidman:
> "The big difference between
me and Milton is that everything reminds Milton
> of the money supply;
everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out
> of my
papers".
>
> These French student economists are still trying
to recreate the French
> Revolution. They tried again in 1968 with
those notorious Student Riots
> which spread into most universities,
if you remember. But that didn't
> succeed either. Whatever it was
they were protesting about.
>
> I couldn't help but chuckle at
J. K. Galbraith's magnificently diplomatic
> "support" for them in
their 4th Newsletter (as was Solow's previous article
> in "Le
Monde"). The only way he could express sympathy for them was by
>
saying that the counter-protest (the response of some of their
Professors
> of economics) was even sillier.
>
> In fact,
I felt quite drawn to Galbraith after reading his piece -- even
>
though I disagree with him, and even though he's Canadian.
>
>
Keith
>
>
>
__________________________________________________________
> "Writers
used to write because they had something to say; now they write in
>
order to discover if they have something to say." John D. Barrow
>
_________________________________________________
> Keith Hudson,
Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
_________________________________________________
>
