Two quotes, three questions
Question 1: In the first quote, what is the missing word?
Above all, we —————- have a responsibility to the future of our craft. Science, as I shall later argue, is based on an ethic, and that ethic requires good faith on the part of its practitioners. It also requires that each scientist be the judge of what he or she believes, so that every unproved idea is met with a healthy dose of scepticism and criticism until it is proved. This, in turn, requires that a diversity of approaches to unsolved problems be supported and welcomed into the community of science. We do research because even the smartest among us doesn’t know the answer. Often it lies in a direction other than the one pursued by the mainstream. In those cases, and even when the mainstream guesses right, the progress of science depends on healthy support for scientists who hold divergent views.
Science requires a delicate balance between conformity and variety. Because it is so easy to fool ourselves, because the answers are unknown, experts, no matter how well trained or smart, will disagree about which approach is most likely to yield fruit. Therefore, if science is to move forward, the scientific community must support a variety of approaches to any one problem.
Question 2: Who is the author of the second quote?
I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today – and even professional scientists – seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historical and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. The independence created by philosophical insight is – in my opinion – the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.
Question 3: Are these quotes relevant today to economists and economics?
Highly relevant, but extraordinarily disappointing.
The ‘disproof’ of the neo-classical body of thought seems watertight to me. Yet it survives. Inertia? Perhaps. But also an indifference by those whose responsibility it is to protect the subject from degradation.
The academic community at large has allowed economics to become what it is. It still teaches the central thought of the neo-classical tradition even while it weighs in on real world topics and policy making as if that tradition had any real world relevance. Perhaps the issue is that even those who refer to themselves as ‘real world’ still cling to the old framework and find it difficult to imagine a new world. They can offer great critiques and all seem so sincere in their rejection of the old. But can they build the new? That seems to be the question most in need of an answer.
And, more to the point: economists seem incapable of embracing methods that are not firmly within the old tradition … the forest is in full view, but they still see it as a set of individual trees. All heterodoxy adds to this vision is that they, at least, recognize there are different kinds of trees. I suppose that’s progress.
But still no forest.
Answer 1: First quote:
Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics. London, Allen Lane, 2006. pp. xxi-xxii.
Answer 2: Second quote:
From a letter Albert Einstein wrote to a young physicist in December 1944. Quoted in Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics. London, Allen Lane, 2006. pp. 310-11.