Economics Broadly Considered: Essays in Honor of Warren J. Samuels.(Book Review)

Publication: Review of Social Economy

Publication Date: 01-MAR-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Routledge

Economics Broadly Considered: Essays in Honor of Warren J. Samuels. Edited by Jeff E. Biddle, John B. Davis and Steven G. Medema. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Pp. x, 374. $75.00. ISBN 0-41523672-X.

This work is divided into an introduction by the Editors and four parts containing 17 chapters written by the same number of authors. In accordance with Samuels's wide-ranging work, the four parts are labeled "The history of economic thought," "Aspects of economic method," "The legal-economic nexus," and "Aspects of institutional and Post Keynesian economics."

The chapters are of a somewhat uneven quality, and some of their authors are taking an approach that is unlike that of Samuels. For example, in the section on the history of economic thought, Paul A. Samuelson contributes a chapter on "A quintessential (ahistorical) Tableau Economique. To sum up pre- and post-Smith paradigms" (pp. 49-63) in which he developed a number of mathematically formulated versions of the Tableau Economique (pp. 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59). Samuelson concluded his inquiry thus: "Years ago, I wrote: 'Inside a classical economist, you discern a neoclassical economist trying to get in.' My archetypical tableaux flesh out this heuristic perception. And in my considered opinion, these explications cast cogent doubt on the view ... that 'going back to the classics' somehow offered a different and better alternative to the post-neoclassical mainstream paradigm" (p. 61). In his chapter, Samuelson takes an unabatedly whiggish approach. Thus he observes that "the present detailed exposition will demonstrate that there has to be a basic identity between the methodology of 1800, 1900, and 2000 ... Theoretical misunderstandings gradually get cleared up partially or wholly." (p. 59). Theoretical development is tantamount to a process in which a hypothesis progresses incrementally from error to truth.

On the other hand, W. J. Samuels has employed a variety of historiographical methods that range from rational reconstruction to rhetorical analysis. In all his inquiries, however, Samuels has emphasized the integrity of a particular contribution because it was firmly anchored in a particular historical setting (see Samuels 1972, 1974 and 1997a). Thus the formulation of a new theory is relative to time, place and sociocultural milieu.

There are, however, several contributions in the Festschrift in honor of Samuels that are more in sync with his outlook, interests, approaches and methods than is Samuelson's expose. Inasmuch as constraints of time and space prohibit me from commenting on each of the other 16 chapters in the book, I confine myself to a survey of only four of the remaining chapters. I have chosen these because I fancy that they were written pronouncedly in the spirit of Samuels's thinking and because they appeal to my own biases. I consider the chapters in the order in which they appear in Economics Broadly Considered.

Hence I turn first to Chapter 1 "The training of the economist in antiquity: "The Mirror for princes' tradition in Alcibiades Major and Aquinas' On Kingship" by S. Todd Lowry (pp. 33-48) who is an internationally recognized authority on ancient and Medieval economic thought.

In his contribution, Lowry excavates an ensemble of original and unique ideas and propositions, which were encrusted in the body of ancient Greek economics and unearths similar presuppositions and hypotheses that were crystallized in the economics of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In the case of Greek thinking, Lowry uncovers the pertinent economic ideas indirectly by discussing the economic doctrines to which students of economics were exposed in a mode that was similar to the manner in which princes were educated in the "mirror for princes tradition." According to Lowry, this type of princely education occurred when the future rulers were imagined to be exposed to texts a la mirrors held in front of them. In the case of the education of economists, this metaphoric view of texts implied strongly that the works in question mirrored the knowledge that students were supposed to absorb in order to discharge their future duties through masterly performance of their institutionalized functions (pp. 33, 34-43).

The doctrines in which the future economists were drilled were formulated by authors who emphasized the importance of the division of labor. Thus it was postulated that "the division of labor was essential to an efficient, well-ordered just society." It was further argued, however, that the virtuous capability to specialize "was best attained by the intelligent administrator assigning individuals the tasks for which they were, by nature, best fitted." In addition...

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