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from post-autistic economics
newsletter : issue no. 5, March, 2001
Real Science Is Pluralist Edward
Fullbrook (University
of the West of England, UK)
©
Copyright: Edward Fullbrook 2001
Fifty
years from now, when historians of ideas write about how economics turned
away from scientism and toward science, they may identify the pivotal
event as the appearance of Robert Solow’s
article in Le Monde (3 Jan. 2001). Most economists living today grew
up with the idea, even if not always agreeing with it, that there is and
should be a master theory, neoclassicalism. But the idea of a nation, the
United States, claiming mastery over the theoretical core is not one that
often has been publicly proclaimed.
Yet that is the implied message that leaps from every paragraph of
Solow’s article, and whose aftershocks are, as I
write, awakening economists from their slumbers.
Nevertheless,
those future historians will be wrong if they hold Solow to account for more than being just an average
guy who opened his mouth in the wrong place at the wrong time. Solow’s
article merely manifests in nationalistic form an ideology that has choked
the social sciences, economics in particular, for as long as most of us
can remember. Let me try to explain.
Recently
I wrote a paper concerned with identifying within a theoretical context a
range of economic phenomena.
It focuses on categories of market behaviour which, on the one
hand, are well-known, commonplace, completely respectable and increasingly
dominant, but which, on the other hand, are excluded from the theoretical
core of mainstream economics.
One cannot easily imagine a similar dysfunctional state persisting
in a natural science -- such
as, for example, physics refusing to consider micro-physical phenomena
because they don't observe the metaphysics of gravitational theory. But of course such states of
affairs in economics are the rule rather than the exception, and it is
worth considering why this is so.
I am going to filter this brief inquiry though a short passage by
Roy Bhaskar.
In
The Possibility of Naturalism (1979), he writes as
follows;
one has in science a three-phase schema of development in which, in
a continuing dialectic, science identifies a phenomenon (or range of
phenomena) [that's phase one], constructs explanations for it and
empirically tests its explanations [that's two], leading to the
identification of the generative mechanism at work [that's three], which
now becomes the phenomenon to be explained, and so on. [and that's the
dialectic] [p. 12]
My
view is that, with one notable exception, this dialectic largely failed to
function in 20th-century economics, and that this breakdown resulted from
the discipline's refusal to enter into Bhaskar's
phase one.
Instead
of identifying phenomena which it then seeks to explain, economics avoids
the dialectic by only considering phenomena consistent with existing
explanations. In recent
decades, this upside down "science"---this choosing what one sees in order
to justify a theory and its ontology, rather than using theory to
understand intransitive realities, became hegemonic as economics construed
support from new narratives of scientific practice, especially Thomas
Kuhn's. I want to outline the
negative role which I think philosophy of science, in spite of Bhaskar's work, has played in economics.
This
requires me to say a few things about the philosophy of science,
especially its relation to historical events. Last century's fascination with
this previously obscure corner of philosophy seems to have been triggered
by the acceptance of Einstein's theory of relativity. This event fits well with several
narratives of scientific progress, including Bhaskar's.
Unlike Bhaskar's, however, Popper's and
Kuhn's narratives also fitted the meta-narrative which dominated
geo-political perceptions from the 1940s onwards -- that is, that of
global powers and ideologies battling it out until one gains total victory
over the other. Popper
indirectly, and one assumes unconsciously, brought this narrative
structure into play by shifting the epistemological focus from scientific
theories themselves to their dramatic encounters with tests designed to
discredit them. The stylized
exemplary case for Popper's narrative became the falsification and
overthrow of Newtonian physics, by means of tests devised through the
competing and victorious theory of the cosmos, Einsteinian physics. This story had instant appeal for
an intellectual population accustomed to global conflict and submerged in
Cold War mythology. It
offered a simple, winners and losers storyline worthy of Hollywood, and
echoed the major traumas and neuroses of the latter half of the
century. So it was no wonder
that by the 1960s even people who had never opened a science book could
chatter about falsification.
The
popularization of the putative ins and outs of scientific advance
accelerated with the appearance in 1962 of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions.
It was really this book that made philosophy of science
box-office. It also, with its
multi-faceted concept of the paradigm, provided economics with a
rationalization for its worst practices, especially its head-in-the-sand
approach to major kinds of economic phenomena. Recently, rereading Kuhn's book
after a space of many years, it was a shock to be forced to reengage with
the paranoid, bi-polar rhetoric and logic which through the 1950's and
60's shaped most public discussion in Kuhn's America. Kuhn himself is open about
locating his book in this historical framework. In his Preface to the original
1962 edition, he writes, that his book was conceived and written over a
period of 15 years, in other words, from the heyday of McCarthyism to the
Cuban Missile Crisis and the height of the Cold War.
And
it shows. The scenario which
Kuhn, so skilfully, sketches regarding scientific endeavour is, in the
main, the same as that which structured the more intemperate, more
right-wing accounts of what was billed as the struggle between Communism
and the Free World. Kuhn's
book methodically transposes the Cold War narrative onto the
competing-theories narrative of science. This transposition extends even to
his vocabulary, with a heavy use of Cold-War buzz words and expressions
like "subversive", "polarization", "crisis" and "crisis provoking",
"techniques of mass persuasion", "allegiance", "commitment",
"conversions", total "destruction" and "total victory", and of course
"revolution". Others of
Kuhn's most favoured expressions echoed then current geo-political
equivalents. For example,
"adherents" translates "patriots"; "incommensurability", no peaceful
co-existence; "different world view", different ideology; "pre-paradigm",
third-world; "rival theories", rival powers; and so on.
Kuhn
also repeatedly foregrounds a parallel between paradigms and political
institutions. For example, he writes, "Like the choice between competing
political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a
choice between incompatible modes of community life." [94] It is this emotionally-charged us
or them, all or nothing mentality which Kuhn's book seems to legitimate as
the ethos of science. "After
the pre-paradigm period," writes Kuhn, "the assimilation of all new
theories and of almost all new sorts of phenomena has in fact demanded the
destruction of a prior paradigm and a consequent conflict between
competing schools of scientific thought." [96] Kuhn's narrative makes the
defence of one's paradigm community, through the elimination or
marginalization of rival ones, the scientist's over-riding goal. And it makes the identification of
new sorts of phenomena, the first phase in Bhaskar's schema, something to be avoided like nuclear
war.
Kuhn's
paradigmatic, that is, anti-pluralist science does, however, make
one fundamental concession to the notion of science as a pursuit of
truth. Although Kuhn condones
all manner of evasions and closed-mindedness, he posits a limit beyond
which empirical realities count for more than loyalty to a community of
belief, where, in his words, scientists "can no longer evade anomalies
that subvert the existing tradition of scientific practice," and where in
consequence a scientific revolution takes place. [Kuhn, p. 6]
But
in social sciences, conditions rarely, if ever, exist for a revolution in
the way Kuhn describes. Here
paradigm changes are more likely to result from changes in socio-political
forces than through any logic of scientific discovery. Unlike natural scientists, social
scientists seldom come up against reality's hard-edged recalcitrances.
With rare exceptions -- like The Great Depression -- the links
between the social scientist's paradigmatic beliefs and the intransitive
world around him or her are both conceptually tenuous and unconnected to
the possibility of objective tests.
Consequently, difficulties thrown up by external reality can --
when the paradigmatic, that is, anti-pluralist, ethos prevails -- be
brushed aside or charmed away by rhetorical and formalistic devices, or,
-- better yet -- as with all kinds of faiths, by wilful disregard for all
phenomena inconsistent with one's beliefs.
For
these reasons, Kuhn's narrative becomes, in the hands of economists, a
formula for an eternal status quo, for the cessation of all significant
change. It excuses
exclusionary devices in defence of the dominant paradigm community, and it
subordinates the advancement of economic knowledge to the upholding of a
system of belief tied to a vast network of
patronage.
These
remarks presume that Kuhn's narrative fails as a generally fair
description of development in the natural sciences, that in general the
natural sciences are not opposed to registering awareness of new ranges of
phenomena. So a few words are
needed to support this view and to explain why I believe that Bhaskar's narrative, as encapsulated in the paragraph
quoted at the start, is a vastly superior account of scientific practice
-- superior both as a description of actuality and as an ideal.
The
competing-theories narrative of scientific advance, in its various forms,
builds its case primarily on the basis of examples drawn from
physics. Yet even here it is
easy to show that the now traditional view both fails to account for and
runs counter to major developments.
This holds especially for Kuhn's version, which turns on the notion
of irreversible gestalts.
For
several generations, fundamental research in physics has been focused
primarily on "unification". Various schemes exist for characterizing "the
unification process", but all describe a state of affairs incomprehensible
in terms of the traditional competing-theories, anti-pluralist narrative
of scientific development.
Stephen Hawking, for example, explains the quest as
follows.
Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic
partial theories - the general theory of relativity and quantum
mechanics. They are the great
intellectual achievements of the first half of this century. .... Unfortunately, however, these two
theories are known to be inconsistent with each other - they cannot
both be correct. One of the
major endeavours in physics today...is the search for a new theory that
will incorporate them both - a quantum theory of gravity.
[13]
Reading
this passage through the competing-theories lens, as offered by Popper or
Kuhn, invites total misunderstanding. Physicists perceive relativity and
quantum mechanics not as competing theories championed by warring camps of
physicists, but rather as different and complementary conceptual
approaches to the fundamentals of physical reality. These two narratives illuminate
separate ranges of phenomena in what unification physicists see as
ultimately the same domain of inquiry, but which, until some more
fundamental structure or generative mechanism is identified, cannot yet,
if ever, be reconciled with each other. Rather than behaving
paradigmatically, that is, ignoring the existence of micro phenomena
because they contradicted both relativity and classical theory,
20th-century physics proceeded pluralistically. It got on with the difficult work
of progressively identifying this range of phenomena and then constructing
and testing new explanations.
The physicists' dream of unification, with its implicitly deeper
level of understanding than that of existing theory, arises directly out
of its pluralistic approach. It allows for the peaceful
co-existence of the two narratives, the heuristic significance of each
being enhanced by the existence of the other. Physicists seek neither to
discredit relativity or quantum mechanics, but rather to create, in Hawking's words, "a new theory that will incorporate
them both".
Hawking's
view of 20th century physics also contradicts Kuhn's narrative in another
way. The central plot device in Kuhn's story of paradigmatic,
anti-pluralist science is his portrayal of natural scientists as
gestalt-bound, that is, as capable of thinking only within single
conceptual systems. He
identifies this intellectual incapacity as a sort of negative force which
necessitates taking an anti-pluralist approach to science which then
creates blockages to the advancement of knowledge, thereby creating
pre-revolutionary states. But
are scientists really so conceptually inept? Was John Stuart Mill really so
wrong when he characterized the scientific imagination as the faculty for
"mentally arranging known elements into new combinations"? [System of
Logic, 433] Are
scientists really incapable of shifting back and forth between seeing the
world in different combinations, between, if you like, seeing the duck and
seeing the rabbit?
If
natural scientists were as gestalt-bound as Kuhn repeatedly alleges, then
20th-century physics could never have taken place. Shifting between narratives with
radically different conceptual systems can be a daily occurrence for
20th-century physicists. For
them conceptual agility -- that is, the ability to move freely between
conceptual gestalts -- is imperative. Unlike theory replacement,
unification of theories demands the ability to jump back and forth between
conceptual systems. And even
to become a physicist, one must learn to think within the conceptual
frameworks of both relativity and quantum mechanics. All the rest of modern physics is
derived from one or the other of these two theories whose "basic
concepts", notes the physicist David Bohm,
"directly contradict each other." [Wholeness and the Implicate
Order, p. 176] General
relativity conceives of matter as particulate; of physical objects as
having actual properties; of all physical reality as determinate; and all
events as, in principle, having a causal explanation. Quantum theory, on the other hand,
conceives of matter as a wave-particle duality; of physical objects as
having only potential properties within the given physical situation; of
the existence of indeterminacy; and of the existence of events incapable
of causal explanation.
Conceptual differences and theoretical inconsistencies greater than
these are scarcely imaginable.
Yet, for nearly a century, these two metaphysically dissimilar
narratives have worked, not in competition, but in tandem to the produce
what are arguably the greatest advances in the history of
science.
Unlike
Kuhn's narrative, Bhaskar's three-phase schema
of scientific development sits comfortably with this history. It also suggests a way of
advancing radical reform of economics. Taking Bhaskar's view of science, the question becomes how,
in economics, do you kick-start the dialectic, when in the main it has
been stalled for decades and when powerful institutional forces work to
keep it from starting up again.
As
previously indicated, my view is that the blockage of the first phase --
the identifying of phenomena -- has stalled economics. Here Bhaskar's verb "identifies" must be given a robust
interpretation. Passive
identification of economic phenomena not covered by existing theory is,
for the reasons stated above, insufficient for getting economists to take
them into account. To get
from phase one to phase two -- that is, from identification to
construction of explanations -- reformers must find a way through the
defence mechanisms, mis-education and
indifference with which, by tradition and Kuhnian anti-pluralist, ideology, the profession
encases itself. This, I
believe, argues for two kinds of initiative both directed at the
identification of economic phenomena, but by different means.
First,
economics will be resuscitated and made relevant to the urgent needs of
the new century, only if roused from its ontological slumber. Wittgenstein characterized his
kind of philosophy as “not a body of doctrine but an activity," whose
"work consists essentially of elucidations." [Tractatus, 4.112] Because economic ontology has for
so long been off-limits, much elucidatory activity regarding economics’
concepts and the nature of economic reality, as in the work of Lawson and
Stretton,
is now called for.
Economists and students must be led to a practical awareness
of the open nature of
economic existence and of the importance of internal relations, and of how
these dimensions of economic reality mean that the deductivism of traditionalist economics excludes the
identification of most economic phenomena from within the context of
explanation. The ontological
preconceptions and methodological pieties of traditionalist economics both
mask from view the larger part of economic events and block inquiry into
the structures which generate them.
In
economics, the first stage of Bhaskar's schema
has been trumped by devotion and obedience to an obscurant
metaphysics. The re-education
of economists to attend to these exclusions and to the possibilities which
they imply, will, it is hoped, coax the discipline into engaging with a
larger range of economic reality. Such elucidations not only
create an intellectual space in which members of the post-autistic
vanguard can operate, but also provide respectability and justification
for traditionalists contemplating post-traditionalist, post-autistic
pursuits. Such work provides
ordinary economists, especially the young ones, with the conceptual means
of articulating their misgivings and intuitions, and in general of
liberating their repressed awareness of all those phenomena whose
relevance the anti-pluralism of their elders denies..
These
elucidations serve to identify economic phenomena in a broad ontological
way. Through a form of
applied philosophical analysis, they explain why there exist vast tracts
of unexplored territory and, at the same time, the reasons behind the
notorious failure of traditionalist methods. But they identify the general
nature and scope of socio-economic reality, rather than particular
phenomena or ranges thereof.
So
a second type of initiative for the identification of economic phenomena
is also required. Compared to
the first, it is less glamorous. But it is at least as
important. As a lure away
from autistic economics, philosophical enlightenment is most likely
insufficient for the rank-and-file economist. He or she must also be enticed
with concrete possibilities for research. To this end, conceptual frameworks
must be developed that bring into view ranges of economic phenomena that
enter strategically into economic outcomes, but that are unrecognised by
traditionalist conceptualisation. That there exists a surfeit of such
possibilities is self-evident to the post-autistic economist. That their successful realization
– the development of effective understandings of the these phenomenal
realms -- are now crucial to human welfare is, outside the economics
community, accepted fact.
SUGGESTED
CITATION:
Edward
Fullbrook (2001) “Real Science Is Pluralist”,
post-autistic economics newsletter : issue no. 5, March, article 5.
http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/review/issue5.htm
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