From Outer Circle to Center Stage: The Maturation of Heterodox Economics

Over the last century, mainstream economists have become increasingly defensive and sectarian, increasingly rigorous in excluding dissidents, sometimes blighting careers at a hint of disagreement with the standard orthodoxy, or, when someone had managed to achieve recognition outside their reach, saying—as I've heard it said about the late Ken Galbraith— " well, he's very clever, but of course he's not really an economist! " One result of this circling of the wagons was the creation of an outer circle of critics and dissidents: economists who thought of themselves as " alternative " or " heterodox. " The outer circle, which contains many serious and creative thinkers, has continued to grow and to pose serious challenges to the mainstream emphasis, assumptions, methods, and conclusions. This essay will briefly describe how the inner circle has limited its horizons, increasing the scope for heterodox economists to claim ever more of the most important issues. A unifying theme will be the tension between two values: that of being scientific (" scientificity ") and that of relevance. These need not—and should not—be in conflict; an important goal for economics in the future is to bring them into better harmony. Across all sciences—back to the days of alchemy and before—there has been a hierarchy of prestige and self-image. A physicist in the last century remarked that only physicists are true scientists; all the rest are stamp collectors. Other natural scientists, often looking up at physics, tend to look down on the social sciences. The latter have competed to assert various kinds and degrees of scien-tificity, with economics staking out its claim as " the queen of the social sciences. " 1 Adopting a " scientific " value cherished by the positivists of the nineteenth and Click here to link to see more about the book on the Michigan Press web site.