On Mon, 7 Mar 2011 10:45:04 -0600 "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
> This is not a full response to Mike at all but a preliminary
> clarification.
> Mike asks:
> "So where is the Physical, as distinct from the Chemical? Are
> biologists foolish to study that arbitrary abstraction biology? All
> sciences abstract and they all blur with other disciplines."
>
> Marx points out in one of he prefaces to _Capital_ that the method
> of
> historical study is _abstraction_ rather than experiment as in the
> physical
> sciences. (I will use "discipline" here rather than "science," which
> is a
> more disputed term.) If we find a discipline, then, corresponding
> to
> "literature" or "economics," it will not be a "physical thing" but
> an
> abstraction. My suggestion, then, is that it seems we cannot
> abstract from
> the total buzz and rumble of human activity an "economy" (or a
> "literature")
> which can be studied as an object of study in itself. And the
> abstraction
> we are looking for can be somewhat sloppy: human activity cannot be
> divided
> without sloppy edges, some cracking of the bones. As I understand
> it,
> "economics" as (more or less) defined by the "economists" has as one
> of its
> subjects providing and explanation of how prices are established.
> And wee
> immediately fall off the cliff into an abyss: clearly to explain
> prices we
> need a study of the whole of human activity in the present 'moment.'
> They
> are obviously not a purely or even mostly "economic" phenomenon.
> They
> belong to some study of human behavior for which we don't have a
> name it
> seems.
I have posted this before, but I will do it again:
Adam Smith, for instance, was a professor of moral philosophy, who undertook the writing of his "The Wealth of Nations," as part of a lifelong project to create a science of man. The notion of a science of man, was a concept that was bandied about by many different Englightenment thinkers like Rousseau, Kant, Francis Hutcheson (Adam Smith's teacher), and David Hume (as well as some later thinkers like the young Karl Marx in his 1844 Manuscripts). It was ultimately David Hume's version of the concept that was embraced by Smith (Hume being a close personal and intellectual friend of Smith). The science of man, as conceived by Hume and Smith, was intended to embrace all of what we might call the human sciences, which would include psychology, history, jurisprudence, and all the various social sciences. Hume himself certainly wrote on all these topics, but he seems to have thought that Adam Smith would be the man to make the science of man a reality. Smith made this project the center of his life's work, with the intention of writing a series of treatises that would cover moral philosophy, political economy, jurisprudence, and other subjects too, like aesthetics. In the end, Smith only managed to complete two of these treatises: one on moral philosophy, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," and "The Wealth of Nations." But it seems to me that Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" cannot be properly understood without being read in conjuntion with "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," and certainly not without seeing it as part of a larger project concerned with creating a science of man.
In any case, the later separation of economics from historiography would have seemed strange to Hume, Smith, and the other early political economists.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ____________________________________________________________ Groupon™ Official Site 1 ridiculously huge coupon a day. Get 50-90% off your city's best! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4d7529ca270fdd1b5bst02vuc