Lonergan, like Euclid, Newton, and Mendeleyev, moved through his field of inquiry to the level of system.
(Given the failure to implement the basic expansion,) the systematic requirement of a rate of losses will result in a series of contractions and liquidations. … [CWL 15, 155]
… a science emerges when thinking in a given field moves to the level of system. Prior to Euclid there were many geometrical theorems that had been established. The most notable example is Pythagoras’ theorem on the hypotenuse of the right-angled triangle, which occurs at the end of book 1 of Euclid’s Elements. Euclid’s achievement was to bring together all these scattered theorems by setting up a unitary basis that would handle all of them and a great number of others as well. … Similarly, mechanics became a system with Newton. Prior to Newton, Galileo’s law of the free fall and Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion were known. But these were isolated laws. Galileo’s prescription was that the system was to be a geometry’; so there was something functioning as a system. But the system really emerged with Newton. This is what gave Newton his tremendous influence upon the enlightenment. He laid down a set of basic, definitions, and axioms, and proceeded to demonstrate and conclude from general principles and laws that had been established empirically by his predecessors. Mechanics became a science in the full sense at that point where it became an organized system. … Again, a great deal of chemistry was known prior to Mendeleev. But his discovery of the periodic table selected a set of basic chemical elements and selected them in such a way that further additions could be made to the basic elements. Since that time chemistry has been one single organized subject with a basic set of elements accounting for incredibly vast numbers of compounds. In other words, there is a point in the history of any science when it comes of age, when it has a determinate systematic structure to which corresponds a determinate field. [CWL 14, Method, 1971, 241-42]
The present inquiry is concerned with relations between the productive process and the monetary circulation. It will be shown 1) that the acceleration of the process postulates modifications in the circulation, 2) that there exist ‘systematic,’ as opposed to, windfall profits, 3) that systematic profits increase in the earlier stages of long-term accelerations but revert to zero in later stages – a [phenomenon underlying the variations in marginal efficiency of capital of Keynesian General Theory, 4) that the increase and decrease of systematic profits necessitate corresponding changes in subordinate rates of spending – a correlation underlying the significance of the Keynesian propensity to consume, 5) that either or both a favorable balance of trade and domestic deficit spending create another type of systematic profits, 6) that while they last they mitigate the necessity of complete adjustment of the propensity to consume to the accelerations of the process, 7) that they cannot last indefinitely, 8) that the longer they last, the greater the intractability of ultimate problems. From the premises and conclusions of this analysis it will the be argued 9) that prices can not be regarded (by the stewards of the economy) as ultimate norms guiding strategic economic decisions, 10) that the function of prices is merely to provide a mechanism for overcoming the divergence of strategically indifferent decisions or preferences (by households and firms), and 11) that, since not all decisions and preferences possess this indifference, the exchange economy is confronted with the dilemma either of eliminating itself by suppressing the freedom of exchange or of certain classes of exchanges, or else of effectively augmenting the enlightenment of the enlightened self-interest that guides exchanges. [CWL 15, 5-6]
It follows that this analytic procedure differs notably from the procedure of the descriptive or the statistical economist; to set up such a systematic unit of terms and theorems is a procedure with norms and criteria of its own. [CWL 15, 18 and ftnt 21]
Any of these rates may begin to vary independently of the others, and the adjustment of the others may lag. But any systematic divergence brings automatic correctives to work [CWL 15, 144]
Lonergan agreed with Schumpeter on the importance of a systematic or analytic framework in order to explain, rather than to merely record or describe, the aggregate phenomena of economics; he agreed with Schumpeter that to be able to explain the booms, slumps, and crashes of the trade or business cycles the economist’s analysis had to be as dynamic as the subject matter under investigation; and he agreed that the economist had to know what are the significant variables in the light of which price changes are to be interpreted. [CWL 15 Editors’ Introduction, liii]
… an ‘explanatory’ understanding grasps things in relation to one another. In these relations lies the basic meaning both of theory, in Lonergan’s sense, and of a systematic as opposed to a commonsense account. [CWL 15 Editors’ Introduction, lv -lvi]
Title of Section 6 of Editors’ Introduction of CWL 15: The Systematic Significance of the Fundamental Distinction between Basic and Surplus Production and Exchange: A Normative Theory of the Pure cycle [CWL 15 Editors’ Introduction, lix ff.iii]
(Lonergan’s work) certainly owes many of its technical insights to Schumpeter, but seems to me to have a more systematic core than that many-sided, but unmathematical genius, ever specified. [CWL 15 Editors’ Introduction, xxv] quoting Peter Burley, ‘A Summary of Lonergan’s Economics; see ftnt 1, page xxv in CWL 15
Newton set down laws of motion and proceeded to demonstrate that if a body moves in a field of central force, its trajectory is a conic section. He set out with a minimal cluster of insights, definitions, postulates, axioms and proceeded to account for the laws that had previously been empirically established, bringing them into a single explanatory unity. ¶A single insight yields a conception, a definition, an object of thought; but from a cluster of insights, you build up a system of definitions, axioms, postulates, and deductions. We have to note that a system is quite an achievement; systems are not numerous. [CWL 5, 52]