매클로스키 비평

이 기사는 주요 출처에 대한 언급에 너무 많이 의존하고 있다. 이차 또는 3차 소스를 추가하여 개선하십시오. (2010년 12월) (이 템플릿 메시지를 제거하는 방법과 시기 알아보기)

맥클로스키 비평은 철학에서의 논리적 실증주의로부터 물려받은, 경제학에서 1940년대 이후의 "공식적인 모더니스트" 방법론에 대한 비판을 말한다. 그 비평은 그 방법론이 경제학을 어떻게 할 수 있고, 어떻게 할 수 있으며, 주제를 진전시키기 위해 행해져야 한다고 주장한다. 그것의 권고안에는 "수양된 대화"를 위한 훌륭한 수사학적 장치의 사용이 포함되어 있다.^[1]

물질

디아드레 맥클로스키의 1985년 저서 <경제학의 수사학>은 "경제학의 수학화는 좋은 생각이었다"고 주장하지만, "경제 모더니즘"은 균형 모델 구축과 계량학(특히 "존재-테오렘" 수학, 통계적 중요성)을 "어처구니없이" 가져갔다고 한다. 대략적으로 말해서 McCloskey는 경제학이 현실 세계에 대해 흥미롭고, 새롭고, 참된 진술을 하기를 원하며, 분석적 틀 안에서 어떤 효과의 가상적인 가능성을 증명하는 것은 이것을 하는 건설적인 방법이 아니라고 주장한다. 비록 경제 모델을 세계와 연결하는 전통적인 방법은 계량학적 분석을 통해 이루어지지만, 그녀는 계량학 교수들이 같은 데이터를 사용하여 모델의 결론의 적용 가능성을 증명하고 반증할 수 있었던 많은 예를 인용한다. 그녀는 경제학자들이 분석 방정식에 쏟아 붓는 방대한 노력은 본질적으로 헛된 노력이라고 주장한다.

'샌드박스 안의 소년들이 무엇을 가질 것인가'에서 맥클로스키는 1940년대에 경제를 탈선시켰다고 비난하는 경제학자들을 다음과 같이 밝혔다.

1. 폴 새뮤얼슨: 그녀의 견해에 따르면, 사무엘슨은 경제학이 하드 과학(특히 물리학)과 더 밀접하게 닮기를 원했고, 이를 달성하기 위해 "블랙보드 증명"과 다른 수학적인 (그러나 반드시 과학적인 것은 아님) 가치의 "부점"을 높였다.
2. Lawrence Klein was the econometrician she says is responsible for the modern "mistake" of confusing statistical significance with scientific significance.
3. Jan Tinbergen she considers responsible for the third vice of social engineering, which is based on the other two. McCloskey says that this presumes to know more than it can, and raised the prestige of the mathematical "modernist methodology" above other ways of performing economics.

Her complaint against the modern profession, and against the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel winners above, has provoked a strong defense from the economic mainstream. It has led to debates with such figures as Kenneth Arrow, who vigorously support the "Samuelson" approach, and argue that the quantity of analytical mathematical models in modern economics is a critical requirement for progress. However, McCloskey acknowledges the virtues as being born from each man's "genius", and rather blames the vices as being created not by these three Nobel economists, but by their students and their students' students, including herself.

The diagnosis and solution

McCloskey says that most economists when they write are "tendentious", assuming that they know already, and concentrating on a high standard of mathematical proof rather than a "scholarly" accumulation of relevant, documented facts about the real world. The advice she offers colleagues here is to spend more time in the archives, and write more heavily researched papers from specific observations in the real world (she argues that this is the norm in the natural sciences on which economics believes it is modelling itself, but that most economics practitioners actually base their methodology more closely on pure mathematics).

Since she says: "No one really believes a scientific assertion in economics based on statistical significance" the solution she proposes to establishing cause and effect in economics is "calibrated simulation". Calibrated simulation relies on measurement and numerical techniques (such as Monte Carlo methods) to test the robustness of its predictions, without requiring a closed-form solution proving that the postulated relationship will always hold (or will be reached in "equilibrium", or be impossible). As an illustration, she contrasts the Babylonian and Greek "rhetoric" used to back up the claim that the square on the long side of every right angle triangle has the same area as the sum of squares on the other two sides: While Greek geometry found a 'universal proof', the Babylonian engineers simply measured the sides of a thousand right triangular stones, and applied the heuristic that since all of these obeyed the relationship so would the rest. McCloskey believes that the Babylonian approach is more applicable to economics, and that Moore's Law and advances in modeling software will soon make it easier to use and understand than the Greek approach.

In Calibrated Simulation is Storytelling she writes that one way to describe scientific theories is how mechanically mathematical they are: at the one end lie such hypotheses as Newtonian celestial mechanics which can be reduced entirely to equations - at the other are important works such as The Origin of Species which are "entirely historical and devoid of mathematical models". McCloskey says that economics would benefit from recalibrating its output within that spectrum to the more historical, "narrative" analysis.

See also

• Epistemological anarchism, Paul Feyerabend's criticism of fixed methodology in the natural sciences, is often compared with McCloskey's
• Economic history

Notes

References

This article includes a list of general references, but it remains largely unverified because it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (June 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

• 1983. McCloskey, D.N. "The Rhetoric of Economics," Journal of Economic Literature 21(2), pp. 481–517. PDF enlargeable by pressing + button. Also via JSTOR.
• 1986 McCloskey, D.N. The Rhetoric of Economics, University of Wisconsin Press; 2nd ed. (1998) ISBN 0-299-15814-4 (First ed. written as Donald McCloskey, leading to occasional confusion in pronouns.) 2nd ed. preview.
• 1995 Mäki, U. Diagnosing McCloskey, and McCloskey, D.N. Modern Epistemology Against Analytic Philosophy: A Reply to Mäki, Journal of Economic Literature, XXXIII(3) September (1300-1323)
• 1995 McCloskey, D.N. Calibrated Simulation is Storytelling Scientific American (reprinted as Simulate, Simulate; Calibrate, Calibrate in How to be Human*)
• 1996 McCloskey, D.N. Ask what the boys in the Sandbox Will Have, Times Higher Education Supplement (London), reprinted in the introduction to The Vices of Economists-The Virtues of the Bourgeoisie
• 2000 McCloskey, D.N. How to be Human* : *Though an Economist, University of Michigan Press, ISBN 0-472-06744-3 (essays for the economic layman on many subjects from Eastern Economic Journal, and her analysis of the profession's treatment of her critique.)