In this very first attempt at posting I thought it proper to touch on the familiar for a bit because PPE is all about the interconnectedness and big picture stuff right? My favorite part or at least the part that stuck with me throughout the rest of the reading, if only because of the catchy language, was the section on Malthus and the nice explanation of why Malthusian misery never came to fruition. The quote that stil makes me giggle everytime I read it is, "birth control seems to have been practiced by the upper classes all through history, which is one reason why the rich got richer and the poor got children (p93)." Hurray for birth control and the means to escape the Malthusian trap! I like that there are opportunities for all to control their procreation like the rich have been smartly doing forever, and I think that Elliott would thoroughly agree and might even give us a double fist pump and a "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" for that one.
In all seriousness though I find it kind of troubling and also kind of alluring that even though we have all these great thinkers and theories for our economy but we still don't really have it down to a science. Sure certain parts of our world fit into the models that we can discuss, but there's no way to encapsulate our economy and watch it perform exactly as predicted. Keynes had it all figured out, but even his theories weren't exactly right or couldn't give us the prescription for our economy in good times and bad. The balance between the views of the macro that agrees with Keynes and the micro that labels us all as robots functioning in perfect trade don't mesh as well as we could possibly hope.This hope for a continuous and all encompassing economic theory seems to be similarly doomed like search to that of the scientists that are looking to derive a theorem that will connect all of physics and make sense of our universe. Sad but far from possible unless you are looking long run, whereas Keynes scolds us and says that in the long run we'll all be dead. Gotta love the uncertainty that the real world promises.
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I should preface this by saying that I'm a big Kuhn fan. I have Professor Valenza to thank for that. I think your insight about the relationship between economics and science is particularly apt. Throughout the reading, it was apparent to me that economics has developed in a similar manner to science. "Paradigm shifts" seem ever-present in the history that Heilbroner presents. As far as my understanding of economics is concerned there always seems to be exceptions that test the rule.
ReplyDeleteAlthough economics may have developed in a similar manner to science, it is unfortunate that it is not always so black and white as science can be after many trials and errors and "eureka! I've got it!" moments. As the tales of these great thinkers show, ideas and theories about the world's economy and society's role in the economy are free flowing and discussed frequently. Although there are a few universal theories about economics that are used quite frequently (supply & demand etc) it still does not seem as concretely explainable as most science topics. Perhaps this is because the "wait and see" period in figuring out the economy is much longer than perhaps a scientific experiment. Also, it is interesting to note that scientists who "had it wrong" are rarely discussed but economists who "had it wrong" (Marx perhaps...) are discussed to this day. This is most likely due the fact that no one has ever understood economics down to an exact science, but rather, we pull on the ideas of all economists.
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