ȁȃȅ Partʺ: EconomicsRobin Winks collected several historical essays under a suggestive
title,Ļe Historian as Detective(ȀȈȅȈ). Like a detective trying to solve
a murder case, a good researcher of historical questions does not let
methodological prejudice or intimidationȈnarrow the range of kinds of
clues he is willing to sift. He is willing to undertake episode-by-episode
analysis, or any other kind that appears promising. Economists, we may
hope, will become equally open-minded even about novel evidence and
argument.ŏśřŜőŠŕŚœ ŔťŜśŠŔőşőş
Ļe disparagers of money-oriented macroeconomics take few pains to link
up their theories with earlier theories and the facts that they appeared to
account for. (Yet in the natural sciences this is standard practice. Kepler’s
astronomy accounted for the observations that the Ptolemaic theory had
already accommodated. Einstein’s relativistic mechanics assimilates New-
tonian mechanics as giving an excellent account of a special case, which
happens to be the world of ordinary human observation.) Instead, the
disparagers of money continue tinkering with their “real” models, “cali-
brating” them, ingeniously striving for verisimilitude.
So doing, they disregard or flout the method of multiple compet-
ing hypotheses. Actually, this is not a specific method or technique, nor
is it a tissue of methodological exhortations and taboos; rather, it is a
broad approach or attitude toward research. Ļe biophysicist John R. Platt
(ȀȈȅȃ), echoing and reinforcing the geologist T.C. Chamberlin (ȀȇȈȆ/n.d.),
persuasively argues for developing rival hypotheses and seeking ways to
rule each one out, seeing which one or more, if any, stand up to the chal-
lenges of the best evidence obtainable.
Ļe contrasting approach or attitude is simply to seek arguments and
evidence in defense of one’s own favorite hypothesis. “[I]n numerous areas
that we call science,” Platt observes (p.ȂȄȁ), “we have come to like our
habitual ways, and our studies that can be continued indefinitely. We
measure, we define, we compute, we analyze, but we do not exclude.
And this is not the way to use our minds most effectively or to make
the fastest progress in solving scientific questions.” A researcher with a
parental affection for his own favorite theory, Chamberlin had already
ȈOn “argument from intimidation,” see passages from Ayn Rand’s works reprinted in
BinswangerȀȈȇȅ, pp.Ȃȁ–Ȃȃ.