Of Lookout Cows and the Methodology of Economics

Abstract

Royall Brandis’s ‘Irreverent Glossary’ possessed bite because most if not all of its entries exhibited both humour and poignant commentary. Literary economists were members of a ‘tribal religion based on belief that sentences can be made as obscure as equations’ and mathematical economists were ‘modern descendents of Babylonian stargazers’. No mode of practising economics was safe.¹ There was no entry for methodology, although commentaries thereon, both implicit and explicit, were present in various entries. This contribution is prepared in the same spirit, albeit with a different mode of execution.

Originally published in Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 22 (September 1988), pp. 853–67.

The author is indebted to Y. S. Brenner, Clyde Burton, and W. Paul Strassmann, as well as to Sylvia Samuels, for their gracious encouragement to pursue this venture to its logical conclusion.