The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other EssaysVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other Essays
Veblen, Thorstein
Economics; Science
From what has been said it appears that an evolutionary economics must
be the theory of a process of cultural growth as determined by the
economic interest, a theory of a cumulative sequence of economic
institutions stated in terms of the process itself. Except for the want
of space to do here what should be done in some detail if it is done at
all, many efforts by the later economists in this direction might be
cited to show the trend of economic discussion in this direction. There
is not a little evidence to this effect, and much of the work done must
be rated as effective work for this purpose. Much of the work of the
Historical School, for instance, and that of its later exponents
especially, is too noteworthy to be passed over in silence, even with
all due regard to the limitations of space.
We are now ready to return to the question why economics is not an
evolutionary science. It is necessarily the aim of such an economics to
trace the cumulative working-out of the economic interest in the
cultural sequence. It must be a theory of the economic life process of
the race or the community. The economists have accepted the hedonistic
preconceptions concerning human nature and human action, and the
conception of the economic interest which a hedonistic psychology gives
does not afford material for a theory of the development of human
nature. Under hedonism the economic interest is not conceived in terms
of action. It is therefore not readily apprehended or appreciated in
terms of a cumulative growth of habits of thought, and does not provoke,
even if it did lend itself to, treatment by the evolutionary method.
At the same time the anthropological preconceptions current in that
common-sense apprehension of human nature to which economists have
habitually turned has not enforced the formulation of human nature
in terms of a cumulative growth of habits of life. These received
anthropological preconceptions are such as have made possible the
normalized conjectural accounts of primitive barter with which
all economic readers are familiar, and the no less normalized
conventional derivation of landed property and its rent, or the
sociologico-philosophical discussions of the "function" of this or
that class in the life of society or of the nation.
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