It’s been a busy few days in my other job, so for relaxation I’ve been reading [amazon_link id=”0199608431″ target=”_blank” ]Darwin The Writer [/amazon_link]by George Levine. Its argument is that Darwin’s [amazon_link id=”0199219222″ target=”_blank” ]On The Origin of Species[/amazon_link] of 1859 is the most important work of English literature of the 19th century. I’m easily persuaded it’s one of the most important books of its day, less so about its standing in the world of literature compared to, say, [amazon_link id=”1853262374″ target=”_blank” ]Middlemarch[/amazon_link] or [amazon_link id=”0141441143″ target=”_blank” ]Jane Eyre[/amazon_link]. If anything, I’d nominate [amazon_link id=”014043268X” target=”_blank” ]The Voyage of the Beagle[/amazon_link] for the literature category; it’s a terrific read.

However, it is a very interesting read about the part Darwin’s clarity of prose and typical style of argument played in making the intellectual case, setting out the characteristic pattern of a description of some puzzle or extraordinary feature of nature or geology, a detailed explanation of the chain of causation, and a reaffirmation of the wondrous intricacy of the phenomenon. The ultimate message is that it is our mind, not nature, that creates order. Nature is, in Dennett’s description, a mindless algorithm.

[amazon_image id=”0199219222″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]On the Origin of Species (Oxford World’s Classics)[/amazon_image]

I do have a complaint about the book, which is that it is written in the kind of florid academic style that tends to obscure rather than clarify meaning – one sentence that I struggled with ran over ten lines – somewhat ironic given the subject matter. However, the question of the part rhetoric per se plays in making an argument or creating an intellectual framework is fascinating. I’ve always firmly believed that the ability to write clearly about something is a test of whether you truly understand it. But clarity of writing is only one aspect of an extended argument; the structure of the argument, the linking of one thought to another, is just as important. Deirdre McCloskey has skewered conventional economic modes of argument in [amazon_link id=”0299158144″ target=”_blank” ]The Rhetoric of Economics[/amazon_link]. Economists typically combine academic style with a strong inclination to use jargon, although the spread of blog-writing is improving matters.

[amazon_image id=”0199608431″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Darwin the Writer[/amazon_image]

I’ve finished Paul Ormerod’s very enjoyable new book [amazon_link id=”0571279201″ target=”_blank” ]Positive Linking: How Networks Can Revolutionise The World[/amazon_link]. As I’ll be reviewing it for the next issue of The Business Economist, I’m not going to write a full review here. But here are two rather interesting points Paul makes, more or less in passing.

One concerns the ‘Orwellian’ use of words (as in [amazon_link id=”014118776X” target=”_blank” ]1984[/amazon_link], and the ‘how not to write’ examples in his essay [amazon_link id=”1849028362″ target=”_blank” ]Politics and The English Language[/amazon_link]) in mainstream economics:

“The ‘real’ of Real Business Cycle Theory signifies that recessions are caused by ‘real’ factors such as productivity and rational behaviour by agents. ‘Real’ is juxtaposed to ‘nominal’, nominal factors being such obviously irrelevant concepts as money, credit and debt!” (p115)

This is both a slightly low blow, because we all know the difference between technical and normal usage, and also at the same time gave me (and the dog…) pause for thought.

The dog is an active social networker

The second point is a section about how ideas spread, the evidence suggesting that the media have only a mild influence on public opinion. Paul writes:

“For many sociologists and media studies academics, the idea that the mass media lack this power is unacceptable, regardless of the fact that the empirical evidence points towards it…..How can it be possible that people in general do not subscribe to the views of the liberal elite, which are so self-evidently correct? They must obviously have been brainwashed.” (p186)

That made me laugh. (For the avoidance of doubt, that last bit should have been printed in my proposed new type face, ‘ironics’, which will slope backwards, as italics slopes forwards.)

[amazon_image id=”0571279201″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Positive Linking: How Networks Can Revolutionise the World[/amazon_image]

From Chapter 20 of [amazon_link id=”019953764X” target=”_blank” ]An Autobiography[/amazon_link] by Anthony Trollope:

[amazon_image id=”019953764X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]An Autobiography (Oxford World’s Classics)[/amazon_image]

“Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write [amazon_link id=”1853262552″ target=”_blank” ]The Way We Live Now[/amazon_link]. And as I had ventured to take the whip of the satirist into my hand, I went beyond the iniquities of the great speculator who robs everybody, and made an onslaught also on other vices;–on the intrigues of girls who want to get married, on the luxury of young men who prefer to remain single, and on the puffing propensities of authors who desire to cheat the public into buying their volumes.”

[amazon_image id=”0199537798″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Way We Live Now (Oxford World’s Classics)[/amazon_image]

The sheen is at last coming off the splendour of our own Melmotte-ian episode.

Reading the latest news about the behaviour of Barclays Bank employees in the City (following up on the misselling of PPI plans to the tune of £1.3 billion by their high street colleagues and the ‘aggressive tax avoidance’ the bank practiced until stopped by the government, at a saving of £500m for the taxpayer) sent me back to Charles Kindelberger’s [amazon_link id=”0230365353″ target=”_blank” ]Manias, Panic and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises[/amazon_link]. He writes:

“The forms of financial felony are legion. In addition to outright stealing, misrepresentation, and lying, there are many practices close to the line.”

As he notes, bubbles themselves can be swindles. The line between irrational exuberance and immoral swindling is fuzzy.

Kindelberger notes that a traditional punishment for financial crime involved sewing the miscreant in a sack with a wild creature (snake, monkey, wildcat etc) and throwing it into a river. This, he notes, seems excessive. Nevertheless, the emergence of the extent and scale of crime during the preceding boom marks an important turning point in the cycle, the book says.

“The curtain rises on revulsion, and perhaps discredit.”

No ‘perhaps’ about it, I would say. It really is time for the financial sector to rejoin the same moral universe as the rest of us.

[amazon_image id=”0230365353″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Sixth Edition[/amazon_image]

A PS: for those who haven’t yet come across it online, there is a terrific chart showing a history of financial crises. A friend who knows me well sent me one as a gift – it is a terrific present for anyone of the anorak tendency.