Beyond any shadow of a doubt, there is a change in the air, as economics nears its Copernican Moment.
By Dennis J. Snower – This is probably the most exciting and fruitful time ever to become an aspiring economist. Why? Because economics is reaching its Copernican Moment – the moment when it is finally becoming clear that the current ways of thinking about economic behavior are inadequate and a new way of thinking enables us to make much better sense of our world. It is a moment fraught with danger, because those in power still adhere to the traditional conventional wisdom and heresy is suppressed.
Up to the 16th century, the conventional wisdom on astronomy conformed to Aristotle’s cosmology and Ptolemy’s astronomy. In Aristotle’s system, the earth is the center of the universe and the heavenly bodies are part of spherical shells of aether. These shells fit around one another in a clear order: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars. All these spheres are put in motion by the Prime Mover. By the 16th century, Ptolemy’s astronomy was regarded as in accord with the conventional reading of the Bible, the ultimate source of all knowledge.
Ptolemy’s system encountered endless difficulties in accounting for the empirical evidence, which were addressed through the repeated application of geometric “fixes” (eccentrics, epicycles, and equants). The underlying methodological requirement was to retain the Aristotelian system as the foundation for our understanding of the universe and then to depict each “fix” as a divergence from this accepted foundation. Thus, to be taken seriously as an astronomer, it was necessary to master the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic systems and to develop superstructures on them. Copernicus did not follow this intellectual path, but he did not dare to publish his heliocentric theory until the year of his death, in 1543. In 1632 Galileo published a book supporting Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, was summoned before the Inquisition, and recanted. The Church had the hard power of the Inquisition and the soft power of scholastic theology on its side.
In the academic discipline of economics, we are currently experiencing a tame analogue to these first throes of the scientific revolution. The punishment for heresy is not execution, but intellectual oblivion. more>
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