******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
It's only since the end of the 19th century that economics emerged as an academic specialty in its own right with its own academic departments, degrees, and professional journals. The great economists before then were all trained in other fields. Thus, Adam Smith was a professor of moral sciences, who considered himself to be mainly a philosopher. Besides The Wealth of Nations, his other main work was The Theory of Moral Sentiments. David Ricardo was a businessman. J.S. Mill was a polymath, who had been a child prodigy. He spent most of his adult life working for the East India Company, where he was the equivalent of a high level civil servant. Karl Marx was trained as a philosopher, made his living as a journalist, and was a lifelong revolutionary. The first person to hold an academic chair in economics was Alfred Marshall. Marshall studied mathematics as an undergraduate. He then pursued studies in philosophy which led to his becoming interested in economics. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Louis Proyect via Marxism <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> Subject: [Marxism] Fwd: Economists versus the Economy by Robert Skidelsky - Project Syndicate Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2016 07:50:45 -0500 ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. ***************************************************************** What unites the great economists, and many other good ones, is a broad education and outlook. This gives them access to many different ways of understanding the economy. The giants of earlier generations knew a lot of things besides economics. Keynes graduated in mathematics, but was steeped in the classics (and studied economics for less than a year before starting to teach it). Schumpeter got his PhD in law; Hayek’s were in law and political science, and he also studied philosophy, psychology, and brain anatomy. Today’s professional economists, by contrast, have studied almost nothing but economics. They don’t even read the classics of their own discipline. Economic history comes, if at all, from data sets. Philosophy, which could teach them about the limits of the economic method, is a closed book. Mathematics, demanding and seductive, has monopolized their mental horizons. The economists are the idiots savants of our time. full: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/mathematical-economics-training-too-narrow-by-robert-skidelsky-2016-12 -- Support Louis Proyect biography project https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/ ____________________________________________________________ 1 Fruit That "Destroys" Diabetes (Try This Tonight) Medical Health Advisor http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5862726c1afa9726b6337st04vuc _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
