{"id":13175,"date":"2014-12-29T02:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T06:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=13175"},"modified":"2019-07-06T11:05:32","modified_gmt":"2019-07-06T11:05:32","slug":"the-mit-and-the-transformation-of-american-economics-conference-and-maturation-in-the-the-historiography-of-economic-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2014\/12\/29\/the-mit-and-the-transformation-of-american-economics-conference-and-maturation-in-the-the-historiography-of-economic-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"The “MIT and the Transformation of American Economics” Conference and Maturation in the the Historiography of Economic Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Paul<\/a>
Paul Samuelson (1915\u20132009), doyen of MIT economics<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have a new article out,<\/span> “Decisions and Dynamics: Postwar Theoretical Problems and the MIT Style of Economics,”<\/a><\/span> in the 2014 annual supplement to <\/span>History of Political Economy\u00a0<\/span><\/i>on<\/span>\u00a0MIT and the Transformation of American Economics<\/em><\/a><\/span>. Following\u00a0tradition, I’ll talk a little bit about the thinking behind\u00a0the article in a separate post. However, I would like to start with a few words about<\/span> the 2013 conference<\/a><\/span> that the supplement was based on.<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, it was almost certainly\u00a0the best conference I have attended. To understand why, it will be useful to understand\u00a0the peculiarities of the development of the field of the history of economic thought (HET), and how it seems to be reaching a new state of maturity.<\/span><\/p>\n

For some time now HET\u00a0has been having something of\u00a0an identity crisis. Traditionally strongly affiliated with economics departments, HET, even more so than economic history, has had problems maintaining its status within the economics profession. Concurrently, HET\u00a0has moved\u00a0away methodologically from exegesis on the economic canon (“What did Smith\/Keynes mean when they wrote X?”), and more toward something people working in the history of science would be familiar and comfortable with.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Philip<\/a>
Mirowski<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Early on, this movement was led primarily by\u00a0fairly radical voices. In the 1980s<\/span>\u00a0Deidre McCloskey<\/a><\/span> (a Chicago Schooler interestingly enough, now at University of Illinois at Chicago) began analyzing<\/span>\u00a0the “rhetoric” of economics<\/a><\/span>. Around the same time,<\/span>\u00a0Philip Mirowski<\/a><\/span>, at Notre Dame,\u00a0began to investigate the links between economics and other fields, beginning with 19th-century physics in<\/span>\u00a0More Heat Than Light<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/em>(1989), and culminating with information science and operations research (OR) in<\/span>\u00a0Machine Dreams<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/em>(2002). Both McCloskey and Mirowski use\u00a0historical, methodological, sociological, and literary analysis to level what they regard as a fundamental critique on the modern economics profession. (Mirowski has even styled\u00a0himself<\/span><\/a>\u00a0an “enfant terrible.”)<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0a number of figures—<\/span>Roger Backhouse<\/a><\/span>,<\/span> Wade Hands<\/a><\/span>,<\/span> Mary Morgan<\/a><\/span>, and<\/span> Roy Weintraub<\/a><\/span> being prominent examples, all trained in economics—also\u00a0developed a “thick”\u00a0history of economics and the analysis of economic methodology, while, to varying degrees, holding comparatively\u00a0orthodox views on modern economics and accepting the need to study the intellectual development of the field more or less on its own terms (i.e., not as a debunking exercise).\u00a0Weintraub has also been\u00a0instrumental in building up the<\/span> Center for the History of Political Economy<\/a><\/span> at Duke University, which has become the mecca for\u00a0HET research, and is where the conference on MIT economics was held.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Monster<\/a>For many years this shift has been piecemeal, producing no focused\u00a0research program, per se. Those of us outsiders working to make use of the resulting historiography have had to sift through it, and to take what it has to offer. Early in this blog’s history I wrote<\/span> a post<\/a><\/span> extolling Mirowski’s work\u00a0because of his ability to see an exceptionally wide range of historical connections worthy of examination. This was true even if his\u00a0overarching\u00a0picture seemed geared toward presenting all historical events as either leading toward\u00a0or resisting “the monster at the end of this book,” i.e. contemporary\u00a0economics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, however, there are signs that the historiography\u00a0is approaching a critical mass, so that different historians’ works are starting\u00a0to interleave into an integrated, critical historiography. This development has been much supported by the diverse work of younger generations of scholars,\u00a0including\u00a0many of the good folks associated with the<\/span> History of Economics Playground<\/a><\/span> blog, represented in this volume by\u00a0<\/span>Beatrice Cherrier<\/a><\/span>,<\/span> Yann Giraud<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0and<\/span>\u00a0Pedro Duarte<\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe what made the “MIT” conference so good was that it was dedicated to a well-defined topic, so that the interleaving process already underway was substantially focused and enhanced. Some of the papers dealt with\u00a0the culture and demographics of the department, others with the building up of its faculty, and still others on the evolution of economic ideas within the department. The result was coherent, detailed, concrete discussion, and the production of a shockingly broad and well-integrated picture of economics at MIT, which nevertheless left plenty of room for additional\u00a0elaboration. HET may well have\u00a0successfully made an important historiographical\u00a0turn without losing<\/span>\u00a0“its economics.”<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Peter<\/a>
Peter Temin<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Encouragingly, the conference was also attended by representatives of the MIT economics department itself, including the eminent economic historian<\/span> Peter Temin<\/a><\/span> (who delivered<\/span> a paper on the ride and fall of economic history at MIT<\/a><\/span>), and<\/span> James Poterba<\/a><\/span>, who is also<\/span>\u00a0president<\/a><\/span> of the National Bureau of Economic Research.\u00a0In conversation with some of the historians of economics who have had regular interactions with economists,\u00a0I was told that the interaction with the economists\u00a0at the conference was of unusually high quality, in that the economists actively participated and seemed to take the historians to be serious contributors.<\/span><\/p>\n

My own paper, as delivered, engaged critically with Mirowski’s discussion of the links between OR and economics in the postwar period, and how that was and was not reflected at MIT. However,\u00a0it turned out that\u00a0the picture of economics at MIT was sufficiently robust that no one at the conference really felt the need to engage with Mirowski’s rather sketchy treatment of the MIT milieu in Machine Dreams<\/em>.\u00a0(Mirowski was scheduled to attend, but did not.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"E.<\/a>
E. Roy Weintraub<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, for the published version of the paper, I reconfigured my presentation to concentrate instead on the intellectual affinities and dissimilarities between economics, OR, cybernetics, and industrial dynamics at MIT as part of an examination of the “MIT style” of economics, a subject in which there was significant interest at the conference. I’m not sure that Roy Weintraub, as volume editor, really picked up on this change, as<\/span> his introduction<\/a><\/span>\u00a0to the volume has\u00a0me slaying the radical Mirowski\/<\/span>Amadae<\/a><\/span> beast in the historiography of economic thought, insofar as it disengages economics somewhat from “Cold War” intellectual projects. I don’t think my published piece quite does that<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But one thing (among many) that\u00a0the conference taught me\u00a0is that, when a historiography begins to run\u00a0on all cylinders, empirically and intellectually and sociologically, there is not as much need to overturn ideas as there is to develop them, taking what is valuable from what has been done, and simply leaving behind what cannot be supported by historical research.<\/span><\/p>\n

Institutionally, HET remains in a very fragile state, largely dependent on economists’ willingness to allow positions to occupy valuable budget in their departments. At the same time, the state of the field is unusually strong, and economists’ interest in understanding the divergences in economists’ varying interpretations of economic phenomena is… extant, although there seems to be a sense that the economists can do this themselves, impressionistically, and on the fly. For my part, I hope historians of science and technology prove willing to engage with historians of economics, to learn from them, and to strengthen their hand to the degree that we can.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a new article out, “Decisions and Dynamics: Postwar Theoretical Problems and the MIT Style of Economics,” in the 2014 annual supplement to History of Political Economy\u00a0on\u00a0MIT and the Transformation of American Economics. Following\u00a0tradition, I’ll talk a little bit about the thinking behind\u00a0the article in a separate post. However, I would like to start<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… The “MIT and the Transformation of American Economics” Conference and Maturation in the the Historiography of Economic Thought<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18],"tags":[161,323,352,713,1044,1167,1186,1189,1302,1331,1480,1557],"class_list":["post-13175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary-track","category-history-of-economic-thought","tag-beatrice-cherrier","tag-deidre-mccloskey","tag-e-roy-weintraub","tag-james-poterba","tag-mary-morgan","tag-pedro-duarte","tag-peter-temin","tag-philip-mirowski","tag-roger-backhouse","tag-s-m-amadae","tag-wade-hands","tag-yann-giraud"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15219,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13175\/revisions\/15219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}