----- Original Message ---- From: Mike Beggs <mikejbeggs at gmail.com>
The discipline of economics is also way less monolithic than a lot of people think. There are huge and fundamental differences of opinion and approach, not only between 'heterodoxy' and 'orthodoxy' but within the orthodox itself. Same in every social science. And as Joan Robinson writes in 'Economic Philosophy', there is certainly an ideological component to economics, but there is also a scientific component - even though they are very difficult to disentangle.
[WS:] True. But the same can be said about medieval theology - it incorporated a great deal of what was the cutting edge science at that time - logic, philosophy etc. But its main problem was not its method or even its contents, but its social context.
No science exists in social vacuum - all forms of science (and knowledge, as Foucault would argue) are inherently attached to social power structures. Imre Lakatos further argues that even in empirical sciences rules of falsification are compromised by vested interests in maintaing particular theories (or research programmes to be more accurate.) He calls these efforts problemshifts - stratagems invented to shield core assumption of scientific reseacrh programmes from empirical refutation. These problemshifts maintain the illusion of rationality of what is fundamentally an irrational behavior - sticking to one's beliefs despite empirical evidence to the contrary. Lakatos further argued that these problemshifts can be progressive i.e. leading to new discoveries and new theories or degenerative i.e. reducing the scope condition of the theory and not leading to new discoveries.
To be sure economics has its progressive problemshifts - instututionalism, transaction cost economics, path dependency, cognitive economics to name a few - but it also has more than a fair share of degenerative problemshifts as well (the neco-classical variety.) The key problem here is not the method or even key propositions, but it slink to the existing power and authority structures. Those degenerative problemshifts (orthodox neo-classical varieties) are maintained not because people who propose them do not know any better, but because (quoting John Kenneth Galbraith) they are in the business of providing the needed conclusions to those in the position to pay for them. In short, the main problem with economics, or rather economists, is not that they are irrational but that they are venal. (While we are at that, a similar argument can be made against some other social scientists of the sociological provenence - they are not irrational but
contumacious.)
To sum it up, the problem of economics (or theology) is not its method but its links to power and authority. These links not only corrupt its validity and ultimately rationality.
Wojtek