By: brayden

brayden — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:38:48 +0000

I agree with Krugman’s sentiment in most cases. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that social science is absent a literary touch. McCloskey’s excellent book on rhetoric makes that point better than I can.

By: ln

ln — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:58:49 +0000

With all due respect – I enjoy reading O&M as much as I enjoyed your PhD-course – I believe this might be seen in a different way. Logic is a discipline of both mathematics and philosophy. The former works with the ‘scientific’ approach the latter with the ‘literary’ approach, but both are analytical. As Krugman points out there are ‘literary’ intellectuals, who do not embrace socalled ‘critical theory’. What he is arguing caused a reaction in him was that his editor used a word from socalled ‘critical theory’ (decomposing) to signal ‘literary’. As I read it further, however, Krugman does recognise that signalling ‘literary’ was needed not to scare away potential readers of the specific article. Perhaps O&M readers will recognise that relevant, stringent arguments can be put forth in Latin, but would not be comfortable, if an argument was put forth in that tongue. In parallel I believe that most ‘literary’ intellectuals will recognise that relevant, stringent argument can be put forth mathematically, but do not feel comfortable with them when they are put forth this way. And so in order to have readership to the specific article, Krugman’s editor needed to signal that it was ‘literary’ i. e. did not contain an incompresensible way of arguing to the readership. If this was off topic I apologise.

Comments on: Economic Culture Wars

By: brayden

By: ln