A nice essay by Roger Backhouse and Bradley Bateman in today’s New York Times (Wanted: Worldly Philosophers) has prompted a last thought on Lionel Robbins, having now finished his[amazon_link id=”0814773893″ target=”_blank” ] Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science[/amazon_link]. Backhouse and Bateman (who have a new book out, [amazon_link id=”0674057759″ target=”_blank” ]Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes[/amazon_link]) criticise economists for failing to think enough about the economic system as a whole. This is why economists are unable to engage with the ‘Occupy’ protestors, they suggest – unfairly, as there are lots of economists engaging in that debate, online and outside St Paul’s Cathedral & elsewhere. But we’ll allow the exaggeration for the sake of polemic.

In the days of communism (the good old days?), they argue, understanding comparative economic systems was taught in universities. But now the subject has become disastrously unhistorical, its new graduates unschooled in thinking about the big picture. It is obviously true that economic history has dropped out of the university curriculum, and that this has been an adverse development. One element of the curriculum reform needed now is to restore it. However, this point should not be confused with the separate argument that economics needs to become more ‘heterodox’. For some years now, even before the crisis, there has been a heterodox movement (it used to be called ‘post-autistic’) railing against economic orthodoxy. I always thought these critics underestimated the willingness of mainstream economists to change their methodology – it was one of the reasons I wrote [amazon_link id=”0691143161″ target=”_blank” ]The Soulful Science[/amazon_link]. The orthodox mainstream certainly settles on a mental model – that’s why it’s a mainstream – but that changes with events. Mainstream economists have been hugely interested in behavioural psychology, as noted in this recent post.

So it was cheering in a way to find Robbins making the same point in his 1935 essay:

“The procedure of ‘orthodoxy’ has always been essentially catholic. The attacks, the attempts to exclude, have always come from the other side.” (Chapter 5 Section 4)

Economic analysis, he goes on to say, is intrinsically dependent on empirical evidence which changes all the time as the course of history rolls on. Economic generalisations are bound to be contingent. No doubt the critics will say it’s about time, but the mainstream always has changed and is changing now.

[amazon_image id=”0674057759″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes[/amazon_image]