During the 1930s three men worked on the same problems in the methodology of the social sciences at the same time and they came up with practically the same solutions. Two of the three did the work as a recreational activity at the end of their busy working days. Karl Popper wrote his first book on the philosophy of science after teaching science and mathematics in school. The working title of the manuscript was “The Fundamental Problems of Epistemology”. With that book in press he turned to the problems of the social sciences. Not far away another public servant, Ludwig von Mises, spent his evenings writing a book on ”The Fundamental Problems of Political Economy”. On the other side of the world Talcott Parsons returned from postgraduate studies in London and Heidelberg and wrote “The Structure of Social Action” (1937).
Their combined efforts offered a framework for the study of economics and the other human sciences which could have:
1. Maintained sociology and economics as an integrated discipline.
2. Sponsored partnerships between economists and students of all social institutions – law, politics, literature, religion and cultural studies at large.
3. Ensured that “high theory” and empirical studies inform, enrich and correct each other.
4. Contributed to good public policy, especially by checking the results of increased regulation and intervention in the marketplace and the impact of the erosion of the “bourgeoise virtues”. This work could have commenced when the role of government was much smaller and less entrenched.
There was a window of opportunity for the these three leading figures in their respective fields , plus their followers, to form a united front across the disciplines of sociology, economics and philosophy to promote the ideas that they shared and to debate the views that they did not share.
This did not happen. The defective ideas which all three identified in the 1930s became embedded in the rapidly growing community of academics and researchers after the war.
Who dropped the ball?
Einstein revolutionised physics from a clerks desk also providing much of the cosmological underpinning for the refutation of the Kantian doctrine.
sean
27 Jan 12 at 1:35 am
Einstein may have been classified as a clerk in the patent office but that gave him the opportunity to examine, among other things, all the new timing and coordination devices that were required for the railway systems. He had to take the things apart and put them back together to assess whether they were in fact new or just minor modifications of existing equipment. He also wrote the final reports because his manager realised that Einstein knew more about the physics and mechanics of the devices than he did. One of Newton’s strengths was his capacity to see how experiments might be designed to test his highly abstract theories and the patent office was a place to develop that capacity.
And so, jokes aside, you could say that Einstein, von Mises and Popper were all doing day jobs that contributed directly to their theoretical speculations – Popper in teaching and von Mises in trying to drive the economic policy of the state.
Rafe
27 Jan 12 at 8:33 am
I’m not sure that with the inherit biases humans maintain that anyone really had the ball at all.
The biggest insult to Popper currently that I can see is ‘climate modeling’
How many years can these junk models can apologized for before we understand they are junk.
The failures of models in finance created enormous losses with their role as a useful crutch overbearing their obvious flaws (fat tails).
Apologists for climate modeling could be even more damaging for Australia than the likes of the ratings agencies and risk consultants were for the global economy.
Don
27 Jan 12 at 5:12 pm