Eubulides wrote: > http://leiterreports.typepad.com/ Is economics a "science", revisited > >
ian, have you read toulmin's recent book? (return to reason). thoughts? here's shapin: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n02/shap01_.html relevant: > The 17th-century Quest for Certainty (in Dewey's phrase) turned into > a long-lasting tyranny and a 'perennial disease of modern thought'. > If ordinary life involved judgment under uncertainty, then this was > proof that ordinary life needed repair by Rational Method. > Uncertainty had to be cured and it could be cured by the right > philosophy or, later, by 'legislative' social science. From the 19th > century, economists sought to become 'the Newtons of the human > sciences', elaborating neoclassical equilibrium analysis in supposed > imitation of the Principia Mathematica's rationally intelligible and > completely predictive model of the solar system. But, to Toulmin, > this act of homage proceeded from a delusion. C. Wright Mills once > said that the problem with much sociology was that it had bought the > wrong philosophy of science, and Toulmin says similarly that the > problem with neoclassical economics is that it imitated 'the Physics > that Never Was'. In the 1880s, Henri Poincar�'s monograph on the > Three-Body Problem showed that complete predictability is impossible > in systems vastly less complex than the economic order. Toulmin > denounces development economists for insensitivity to cultural > variables and to 'the practical situation in question', but it is > just as pertinent to note how economics, and indeed other human > sciences, have the capacity - like it or not - to create modern > social realities shaped at least partly after their own image. If > your models don't fit the world, then try to reshape the world to fit > your models: in the modern scheme of things, you can sometimes > succeed, or at least succeed in making a 'real' mess. (Think of the > Western economists' role in the former Soviet Union.) So if you want > to say, as Toulmin does, that strands of these sciences are > inappropriate in practical application, it's not just because they're > insensitive to concrete social realities but because you think the > new realities they help bring into being are lacking in justice and > morality. Criticising a faulty epistemology won't completely let you > off the hook of stating your moral and political preferences, > justifying them as best you can, and then acting on them. > > The Quest for Certainty travels along the channels historically > carved out by the specialist disciplines, and Toulmin doesn't much > like the disciplines either. The condition of their success is a > narrowing of perception, and it's this narrowing that helps keep > disciplinary specialists from noticing the mismatch between the real > world and their idealised constructions. In a world of disciplinary > departments, the world is nobody's department. The disciplines arose, > Toulmin says, from the 18th century largely as a way of ensuring > intellectual peace through boundary-maintenance: we won't look at > your thing if you don't look at ours. Much good has come of the > specialisation they foster - Toulmin acknowledges that > interdisciplinary vigour and breadth (which he approves) are > dependent on a prior narrowing of perceptions - but in his view we > are now in bondage to the disciplines and our society is paying a > practical price for rampant specialisation. When this is combined > with the tyranny of abstraction, and when elegance trumps pertinence, > then things have got out of control. Toulmin hands out some serious > stick to rational-choice theorists, to behaviourist psychologists, to > industrial sociologists, to neoclassical economists (again, the worst > of the lot), and even to biologists in their reductionist modes. His > preferred alternatives include Santa Fe Institute complexity and > chaos theory, the economics of Amartya Sen and Brian Arthur's > 'path-dependency', social-science-as-if-people-mattered, holistic > biology and an implausibly rosy picture of contemporary bioethics and > its role in American clinical medicine. Fair enough, even if Toulmin > oscillates between applauding the recent rise of Postmodern academic > practices and lamenting their marginality, and even if there's the > whiff of the joss-stick and the sound of the sitar about his > presentation of these alternative practices. --ravi
