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Economic History as Humanomics

The Scientific Branch of Economics

  • Living reference work entry
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Handbook of Cliometrics

Abstract

Essays in any field of the intellect about “whither the future of X” have a deep intellectual problem of an economic character. The future is coming, whether we like it or not, and our bets on its outcome will determine how we personally do. But if good predictions were achievable by studying econometrics or by following Warren Buffett, we would all be above average, as in Lake Wobegon. And we are not. So in sober truth, such sessions are actually about “What Do I Want Economic History to Become.” Herewith, I am therefore to be allowed to make unrealistic “predictions.”

Distinguished Professor of Economics and of History Emerita, and Professor of/English and of Communication Emerita, University of Illinois at Chicago. deirdre2@uic.edu. deirdremccloskey.org. The paper originated as a contribution to the session “Whither the Future of Economic History?” at the American Economic Association, Philadelphia, January 2018.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Novick 1988 on American history. Novick argues that eigentlich should actually be translated “essentially,” which gives the phrase a less naively Baconian essence.

  2. 2.

    A late example of his views is Pearson and Moul 1925, “Taken on the average, and regarding both sexes, this alien Jewish population is somewhat inferior physically and mentally to the native population.” And an early one is Pearson 1882 (1900), pp. 26–28, “From a bad stock can come only bad offspring….”

  3. 3.

    Quoted in Niels Bohr: Reflections on Subject and Object (2001) by Paul McEvoy, p. 291. The provenance of the remark is a little hazy, but it is well known. In Danish, the philosopher Hans Siggaard Jensen informs me, it was something like “Fysik er ikke om hvordan verden er, men om hvad vi kan sige om den.”

  4. 4.

    Am Anfang/war das Wort/und das Wort/war bei Gott/Und Gott gab uns das Wort/und wir wohnten/im Wort/Und das Wort ist unser Traum/und der Traum ist unser Leben.

  5. 5.

    Diamond 1988, though Leland Yeager noted correctly that it does provide a useful “integrating factor of the whole body of economic theory” (Yeager 1999, p. 28).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

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  1. Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
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Correspondence to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. BETA/CNRS (UMR 7522), University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study, Strasbourg Cedex, France

    Claude Diebolt

  2. University of Wisconsin Department of Economics, La Crosse, WI, USA

    Michael Haupert

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McCloskey, D.N. (2019). Economic History as Humanomics. In: Diebolt, C., Haupert, M. (eds) Handbook of Cliometrics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40458-0_47-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40458-0_47-1

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