Why did Wicksell change his mind about the machinery question?

Did Darwin change his mind about the Fuegians?

Shocked by what he considered to be the savagery he encountered in Tierra del Fuego, Charles Darwin ranked the Fuegians lowest among the human races. An enduring story has it, however, that Darwin was later so impressed by the successes of missionaries there, and by the grandeur they discovered in the native tongue, that he changed his mind. This story has served diverse interests, religious an...

Does God Change His Mind?

What Do We Know about Macroeconomics That Fisher and Wicksell Did Not?

This essay argues that the history of macroeconomics during the twentieth century can be divided into three epochs. Pre-1940: a period of exploration, during which all the right ingredients were developed. But also a period where confusion reigned, because of the lack of an integrated framework. From 1940 to 1980: a period during which an integrated framework was developed—from the IS-LM to dyn...

Why did Van Gogh cut off his ear? The problem of alternative explanations in psychobiography.

One of the tasks of personality psychology is to explain the behavior of individual human beings. Vincent Van Gogh, for example, cut off the lower half of his left ear and gave it to a prostitute. More than a dozen different explanations of his actions have been proposed. Is one of these explanations true, are all of them true, or, perhaps, are none of them true? And how can we know? This incid...

The Question Is, My Dear Watson, Why Did the Dog Not Bark?

The Joslin 50-Year Medalist Study T he Joslin Gold Medalists comprise 351 U.S. residents who have survived with type 1 diabetes for .50 years. A high proportion of Medalists remain free from proliferative diabetic reti-nopathy (PDR) (42.6%), nephropathy (86.9%), neuropathy (39.4%), or cardio-vascular disease (51.5%). Current and longitudinal (the past 15 years) glycemic control were unrelated t...