Abstract
The subject matter of the economy is unlike that of the natural sciences. It is the product of human intentionality, and as such, it inherently reflects the human judgment that brought it into being. The fundamental ontological diffence between objects found in nature and objects resulting from human intentionality are explored. The domestication of the techniques employed in the natural sciences cannot produce law-like generalisations in economics with the predictive and explanatory power that characterises the laws of the natural sciences. Modern economics has been most convincing when it has paid attention to the problems caused by the lack of homogeneity in the reality it examines. Studies addressing small, spatially and temporally well defined issues offering a generous supply of empirically verifiable evidence have been more effective in guiding us as to what should be than those aiming for the formation of law-like generalisations of universal applicability.
“The art poetic will be weighed in scales”
Aristophanes The Frogs
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Notes
- 1.
As Ayer famously put it, propositions that cannot be verified empirically or by the laws of logic are “neither true nor false but literally senseless”. Ayer, A. J. (1946) Language, Truth and Logic. Dover Press, New York p. 31.
- 2.
For a recapitulation and analysis of the modernist project see Archer, M. (2000) Being Human: The Problem of Agency Cambridge University Press.
- 3.
Plato Republic 522c “I mean number and calculation, for isn’t it true that every craft and science must have a share in that?” Although the ancient Greeks came quite close to devising an instrument with which temperature could be measured, it seems that temperature was not thought to be among the measurables. For a systematic analysis of measurement in ancient Greece see Lloyd, G.E.R. (1987) The Revolutions of Wisdom University of California Press, Chapter V and Nussbaum (2001, 107–110).
- 4.
Lord Robbins famously required only “almost” universal applicability to Karl Popper’s great distress. When and where would that „almost” amount to a falsification, or does that „almost” evade altogether the Popperian falsification test? Hausman’s version of Lord Robbins’ „almost” is reflected in the title of his seminal book. He sees economics as a „separate and inexact” science. (Hausman 1992)
- 5.
In asking this question Polányi follows Adam Smith and Karl Marx , who were serious Hellenists, the first a Stoic and the second an Aristotelian for whom the sharp Platonic distinction between technē and tuchē, described above, was unconvincing.
- 6.
The work of Vivian Walsh, Hilary Putnam , Amartya Sen and Martha C. Nussbaum is a major exception this generalisation, but their work has been largely ignored by mainstream economics. See Putnam, H and Walsh, V.: The End of Value-free Economics. 2012. New York and London, Routledge.
- 7.
For a fine analysis of March’s oeuvre see Jovanovic, F. And Le Gall, P. „March to Numbers: The Statisctical Style of Lucien March ” in Klein, J. L. and Morgan, M. S. (Eds.): The Age of Economic Measurement . 2001. Duke University Press.
- 8.
An examination of the question whether March’s claim that the combination of correlations with graphs salvages spacial and temporal information is beyond the scope of this paper.
- 9.
See for example J. Robinson: What Are the Questions? And Other Essays. (1981.) for the growing concerns of Cambridge UK in its opposition to Cambridge Massachusetts. M.E. Sharpe Inc. New York and the references therein.
- 10.
Mill, J.S. (1843) System of Logic. Longmans, Green & Co. London, Book lll, Ch. Vl. Sec. “Introduction” and Jevons, W. S. The Theory of Political Economy . Palgrave Macmillan pp. xxxviii–xxxix.
- 11.
For a detailed analysis of Jevons’ interest in measuring instruments see Maas, H. „Jevons’ Balancing Acts” in Klein, J. L. and Morgan, M. S. (2001) The Age of Economic Measurement . Duke University Press
- 12.
(13) The U:S: Department of the Navy was an important source of financing for this research.
- 13.
An experiment may, of course, address the phenomena attendant upon separation, but an analysis of these cases is not relevant to economics.
- 14.
A robot could not be made into a rational agent without specifying the terms of its rationality and confining his choices to a limited set.
- 15.
This need to craft a surrogate reality in order to model incorporeal reality also spells trouble for materialism, but that subject is beyond the scope of this paper.
- 16.
For an excellent recounting of this history see Kline, M. (1980) Mathematics; the Loss of Certainty, Oxford University Press.
- 17.
Einstein, A, (1921) Sidelights on Relativity, quoted in Kline, M. (1980) Mathematics ; the Loss of Certainty, Oxford University Press. Some theories deny that mathematical thought is ‘independent of experience’.
- 18.
This is the generally held view. See Morgan, M. S. (2012) The World in the Model; How Economists Work and Think, Cambridge University Press, pp. 138–139.
- 19.
Note that, whereas there are no fewer than ten examples are given for „type-concepts”, ‘ideal-type concepts” are left without any.
- 20.
„I want to emphasise strongly the point about economics being a moral science. I mentioned before that it deals with introspection and with values. I might have added that it deals with motives, expectations, psychological uncertainties.” Letter to Roy Harrod, 10 July 1938 (misdated 16 July) in Collected Letters of John Meynard Keynes .
- 21.
This clause is usually interpreted the same way as in the natural sciences, namely that all other factors remain constant. In the natural sciences this assumption has verifiable truth value. All factors shown to affect the object under study are accounted for and there are means to hold them constant. But in economics we do not know what these other factors might be, there are no means to hold them constant, so the proper interpretation of the clause is that it is assumed that there are no other factors.
- 22.
This clause is usually interpreted the same way as in the natural sciences, namely that all other factors remain constant. In the natural sciences this assumption has verifiable truth value. All factors shown to affect the object under study are accounted for and there are means to hold them constant. But in economics we do not know what these other factors might be, there are no means to hold them constant, so the proper interpretation of the clause is that it is assumed that there are no other factors.
- 23.
Letter to Roy Harrod, ibid.
- 24.
How much of this achievent is due to science and how much of it to economic theory may be the subject of an interminable debate. But there can be little doubt about the subtly corrupting effect on science of having been steered towards the study of subjects that enhance ‘efficiency’ and ‘consumer satisfaction’ as those notions are set out in modern economic theory.
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Róna, P. (2018). Objects of Nature and Objects of Thought. In: Róna, P., Zsolnai, L. (eds) Economic Objects and the Objects of Economics. Virtues and Economics, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94529-3_2
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