"A World Full of Lobsters"

Though all of us have read quite extensively on Adam Smith, Karl Marx, JM Keynes and our favorite, Malthus, I must say that Heilbroner does an excellent job at entertaining his audience as he takes them through “the lives, times, and ideas of the great economic thinkers.” For instance, who knew that that Adam Smith was kidnapped by a band of passing gypsies as a child?

I agree with Sarah that Heilbroner does embrace a rather comprehensive definition of “economist,” but I think his choice to discuss “economic thinkers,” yet to entitle his book, The Worldly Philosophers, is indicative of his acute awareness of the ties he is drawing between the two fields. In fact, Heilbroner mentions in his preface that his publishers suggested retitling the book, The Great Economists. As he says, “Fortunately nothing came of this.” [Though he does say that a student once went to his/her bookstore and asked for “A World Full of Lobsters”… I guess I could see how that rhymes.] In fact, Heilbroner emphasizes the fact that this edition of his book includes an “important thread” that was missing from his prior editions, mainly a certain social vision that underlies all social analysis and runs parallel to the evolution of economic thought.

This brings me to Heilbroner’s discussion of the intersection of science and economics. Even though he largely discusses this in the last chapter, my attention was drawn to it after Hillary brought up the concern that we do not have economics down to a science. I definitely see where she is coming from; three years of CMC economics has certainly made me immediately question the practical applications of a theory upon initial introduction. However, I believe that Heilbroner has an interesting response to this issue.

In fact, he questions on p. 317, “Why, then, should we not applaud the increasing tendency to envision economics as a science?” He bring up the logical reply that the ambivalent nature of human behavior makes it nearly unfeasible to compare economics with the physical sciences. Volition must always be factored into the study of social science. “If economics were in fact a science, we humans would be mere robots, no more capable of choosing what was to be our response to a price rise than is a particle of iron to the presence of a magnet” (317). On almost the other end of the spectrum, Heilbroner also brings up the fact that economics cannot be reduced to a physical science because it is too political in nature. It is unclear how to “objectively” address distribution issues such as hereditary poverty or wealth. Perhaps one could try to enter Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance. Essentially, I think that Heilbroner does a great job at delineating the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to economics while tying in the stories and minds of “Worldly Philosophers” such as Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Hegel and Malthus.

To revert briefly to Malthus: It is not clear to me how Heilbroner suggests that Malthus’s position towards the poor can be viewed as anything but “hard-hearted.” Though Heilbroner asserts that Malthus endorsed the abolition of poverty relief “with the sincerest interest of the poorer classes at heart” (p 84), and attempts to contrast Malthus’s position to social theorists that suggest allowing the poor to simply “die peacefully in the streets,” I am not convinced. What Heilbroner and Malthus seem to be missing is the entire issue of the distribution, not only of wealth, but also of luck. Malthus warns against increasing “the sum of mankind’s misery,” but clearly does not address distributive justice. As Heilbroner states, “It is not surprising that Malthus was regarded as beyond the pale of decent-thinking people.” (85)