Deductive Irrationality: A Commonsense Critique of Economic Rationalism
In their study of economics as rooted in the scientific rationalism of early modern political philosophy, Richard Staveley and his students offer a profound critique of economics as a purely abstract or mathematical science that is detached from reality as we know it by commonsense experience. Anyone who wants to understand the dubious philosophical assumptions of economics—and of the other social sciences as influenced by economics—must read this book. (Larry Arnhart, Northern Illinois University)This timely, original, and thought-provoking collection of essays, taken as a whole, constitutes a fundamental critique of the theory and the practice of economics. It argues that the much admired theoretical and quantitative sophistication of modern economics is a dangerous illusion that gives rise to bad and potentially disastrous policy prescriptions. The essays attempt to lay bare the source of this illusion—a longstanding and mistaken view of the scientific method—and to show how it has influenced economists since Adam Smith. (Peter McNamara, Utah State University)Ideal for students of public policy, this book peels back the protective covering of modern political economy, revealing the inner logic of economic rationality: a logic of economism with its own set of arbitrary and unsustainable policy preferences. Modern political economy has rarely received such an anatomy of abstraction, delivered through concrete case studies of public policy frameworks devised by the great liberal theorists of economic rationality: the Lockean liberals judged against standards of pre-liberal commonsense found in Aristotle's political science. What would Aristotle think of modern political economy? You have the answer here in your own hands, and it is not all negative. (John Uhr, Crawford School of Economics and Government, Australian National University)