PKT message, On Methodology

Barkley:

Any comments on the following?

Gunnar

The "value" become "price" aspect of the neoclassical tradition - embraced in some form by mainstream, monetarist, and PK economists alike - exemplifes the manifestation in Economics of what Cornell philosophy professor E. A. Burtt termed "the methodological barbarism of a few centuries" in the case of Physics.

In so calling a spade a spade, Burtt did not mean to denigrate the achievements of modern physical science - he wrote:

"So far as concerns the problem of the essential nature of reality, it ought to be fairly obvious after the feats of modern physics that the world around us is, among other things, a world of masses moving according to mathematically statable laws in time and space. To bring complaint against so much would be to deny the actual usable results of modern scientific inquiry into the nature of our physical environment. But when, in the interest of clearing the field for exact mathematical analysis, men sweep out of the temporal and spatial realm all non-mathematical characteristics, concentrate them in a lobe of the brain, and pronounce them the semi-real effects of atomic motions outside, they have performed a rather radical piece of cosmic surgery which deserves to be carefully examined. If we are right in judging that wishful thinking in the interest of religious salvation played a strong part in the construction of the medieval hierarchy of reality, is it not an equally plausible hypothesis to suppose that wishful thinking of another sort underlay this extreme doctrine of early modern physics - that because it was easier to get ahead of the reduction of nature to a system of mathematical equations by supposing that nothing existed outside of the human mind that was not so reducible, naturalists proceeded at once to make the convenient assumption? And there is a certain peremptory logic in this. How could the world of physical matter be reduced to exact mathematical formulæ by anybody as long as his geometrical concentration was distracted by the supposition that physical nature is full of colours and sounds and feelings and final causes as well as mathematical units and relations? It would be easy to let our judgment of these giants in the history of thought to be over-harsh. We should remember that men cannot do arduous and profound intellectual labour in the face of constant and seductive distraction. The sources of distraction simply had to be denied or removed. To get ahead confidently with their revolutionary achievements, they had to attribute absolute reality and independence to those entities in terms of which they were attempting to reduce the world. This once done, all the other features of their cosmology followed as naturally as you please. It has, no doubt, been worth the metaphysical barbarism of a few centuries to possess modern science. Why did none of them see the tremendous difficulties involved? Here, too, in the light of our study, can there be any doubt of the central reason? These founders of the philosophy of science were absorbed in the mathematical study of nature. Metaphysics they tended more and more to avoid, so far as they could avoid it; so far as not, it became an instrument for their further mathematical conquest of the world. Any solution of the ultimate questions which continued to pop up, however superficial and inconsistent, that served to quiet the situation, to give a tolerably plausible response to their questionings in the categories they were now familiar with, and above all to open before them a free field for their fuller mathematical exploitation of nature, tended to be readily accepted and tucked away in their minds with uncritical confidence." (The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, 1924/rev. ed. 1932, Doubleday Anchor Book, 1954, pp. 305-306; italics in original.)

The concept of "value" was recognized by Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx as foundational for any would-be Political Economic science much as that of "mass" is a foundational concept in Mechanics.

And, while definitions of "value" and "mass" remain elusive, "mass" is a "something" which fits into the mathematical equations of Mechanics in predictable fashion.

In this respect, John Stuart Mill's conclusion that "value" was a function of time, place and circumstance effectively signaled that the Smith-Ricardo-Marx quest for Political Economic science had been quixotic - that Economics modeled on Newtonian Mechanics was a pipe-dream.

It was at this point that "metaphysical barbarism" reared its ugly head - 'up popped' the idea

(1) that the concept of "value" had never been of any consequence in the first place; and

(2) that "price", the meaning of which was not in need of definition, would do just as well.

The idea was "readily accepted and tucked away in [the] minds [of neoclassical economists] with uncritical confidence".

Now, some 150 years later, few would deny that there is something fundamentally wrong with contemporary economic 'science'.

In my view, that something resides in the profession's acceptance of propositions (1) and (2) above.

Gunnar