Monday, December 8, 2008

Problem indeterminate: Freud, Marx and Darwin!

The ET column Jaideep Mishra some time attempt to shade the ideas and philosophy of economics with new muse, yet the present economic situation which push his mind to look back several years. 

Here are some from the recent article

  • The human, anthropogenic sciences have also had a similar transformation. A hundred years ago, a trio of big ideas — those of Freud, Marx and Darwin — held sway in the intellectual landscape. The ideas were no doubt intellectually seductive, proffering to theorise on the big ‘why’ of it all — of why we are as we are and not otherwise. Hence the essay to make sense of the here and now — Freud at the level of individuals, Marx that for whole societies and Darwin for all living things. 
  • Embedded in the thoughts, certainly in those of Freud and Marx, was the ‘promise of prediction’. The reasoning went that if this is how we traversed thus far, then that must be the way ahead; and if that is the way to go, then this surely is where we ought to be going anyway. 
  • There may well be a case for clear-cut financial innovation norms for orderly markets, but the seemingly loss of predictability in economics is the hallmark of all complex systems. 
  • The fact of the matter is that the role of prediction in economics involves a fundamental tension.

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