Category Archives: Joseph Schumpeter

The Einsteinian Context: Curvature and Relativity

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Albert Einstein, Steven Weinberg, Lillian Lieber, Douglas Giancoli, Raymond A. Serway, Bernard Lonergan, Philip McShane, Peter Burley,

.1. Introductory

Graduate students seeking a thesis topic may expand this treatment of the Einsteinian context of Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics.  It should be of special interest to those having a strong background in theoretical physics and, thus, able to appreciate the analogies from physics.  “Similars are similarly understood.” (CWL 3, 288/313)

Philip McShane alerted us to the resemblances between Lonergan’s context of general macroeconomic dynamics and Einstein’s context of general relativity.

(Part Two entitled Fragments) belongs almost entirely in what I call the Einsteinian context of Part Three, in contrast to the Newtonian achievement of Part One; … [CWL 21, Index, 325]

A new science has emerged.  Lonergan has elevated conventional macrostatics to a macrodynamics explaining economic accelerations. (Continue reading)

A Scientific Normative Alternative Between Laissez-Faire Running Amok and Totalitarianism Featuring Controlled Media, Firm Indoctrination, the Threat of Labor Camps, and Servile Degeneracy

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Frederick Lawrence (Boston College) is a co-editor of Bernard Lonergan’s Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis. (CWL 15)   Fred penned the Editors’ Introduction to that book. (Click here.) He also wrote an article entitled “Between Capitalism and Marxism: Introducing Lonergan’s Economics”.  Perspicacious economists in academe, government, and banking will benefit greatly from an immediate reading.  For access to the article now, please use the following simple path:

In your main search bar, enter JSTOR and press your Enter key.

Then, in the upper left, Click into the box “Search journals, books, images, and primary sources“.

Then, type into that box 40338243 and press your Enter key. That’ll do it. Continue reading →

To and For Economists, Investment Analysts, and Commentators on Bloomberg Surveillance, Squawk Box, and Mornings with Maria

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To Tom Keene, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Maria Bartiromo, Lisa Abramowicz, Becky Quick, Francine Lacqua, Dagen McDowell, Joe Kernen, Jonathan Ferro, Larry Kudlow, Charles Payne, Neil Cavuto, Stuart Varney, Jim Cramer, Henrietta Treyz, Larry Summers, David Weston, Courtney Donohoe, Romaine Bostick, Hallinda Amin, Dani Burger, Gina Cervetti, Margaret Collins, Manus Cranny, Abigail Doolittle, Scarlet Fu, June Grasso, Kriti Gupta, Ritika Gupta, Morgan Brennan, David Faber, Steve Liesmann, Carl Quintanilla, Kate Rooney, Rick Santelli, Michael Santoli, Liz Claman, Gerry Baker, Taylor Riggs, Anastasia Amoroso, Jackie DeAngelis, Brian Brenberg.

Lonergan’s Preface to his seminal work Insight, A Study of Human Understanding, begins …

In the ideal detective story the reader is given all the clues yet fails to spot the criminal.  He may advert to each clue as it arises.  He needs no further clues to solve the mystery.  Yet he can remain in the dark for the simple reason that reaching the solution is not the mere apprehension of any clue, not the mere memory of all, but a quite distinct activity of organizing intelligence that places the full set of clues in a unique explanatory perspective. (CWL 3, Preface ix)

Paraphrasing the above (CWL 3, Preface, ix): Continue reading →

Lonergan’s Entry into Economics (1930-1944) and Reentry into Economics (1978-1983); Democratic Economics vs. Liberalism and Socialism

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The reader will note that most of what’s quoted below comes from a single section, “Lonergan’s Entry into Economics, 1930-1944”, of CWL 15’s “Editors’ Introduction,” authored by Frederick G. Lawrence.  Previously, in several of our own sections we have recommended that Editors’ Introduction as beneficial for putting Lonergan’s Essay in its historical, political, and purely theoretical contexts.  It is a must-read.  We have printed the Introduction’s Table of Contents in several places:  Click here, here, here, and here.  The Table is again printed at the end of this entry.

Lonergan’s Entry into Economics, 1930-1944

We quote: Continue reading →

An Einsteinian Relativistic Context: Space and Time Become Space-Time; Price and Quantity become Price-Quantity; An Abstract Set of Invariant Explanatory Relations

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Contents

  • .I. Relations and Relativity in General
  • .II. Einstein’s Special Relativity and General Relativity
  • .III Lonergan’s Double-Circuited, Pretio-Quantital Relativity Theory
  • .IV. The Basic Price Spread; The Co-ordinated Relativity of Three Major Pretio-Quantital Flows and the Co-operative Relations Within Each Major Flow
  • .V. The Macroeconomic Field Theory Equations
  • .VI. Concerning Verification
  • .VII. Miscellaneous Selections
  • .VIII. Conclusion

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Ray Dalio Regarding Debt Crises

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A recent interview of Ray Dalio (Bridgewater Associates) is available on YouTube. An  introduction to Mr. Dalio’s thinking is available on the Bridgewater website’s home page under the title The Economy, How the Economic Machine Works.

The final paragraph of this Post is as follows: We hope that Mr. Dalio will study Bernard Lonergan’s Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis (CWL 15) to advance his present considerable understanding further – from a self-described “mechanic” to a theorist of circulation analysis, whose formulations are precisely explanatory, compelling to the private sector of the economic process, and verifiable by econometricians.  We hope that, as a person of influence, Mr. Dalio will convey a more advanced, explanatory understanding of the pretio-quantital economic process to the nation and to the world.

In particular, Mr. Dalio should not speak shallowly and haphazardly of “common prosperity”; rather he should understand and master Lonergan’s theory of the basic-expansionary phase of the pure cycle of expansion.  One of the motives driving Lonergan to seek and discover the science of the objective economic process was to establish scientific grounds for social policy.  Unlike in totalitarian countries where people are free to be an obedient ant, here human persons are free to think and learn and free to conduct themselves according to the norms and precepts of the objective economic process. … … We now offer some pointers; as we say in the Welcome: Continue reading →

Theoretical Breakthroughs of Euclid, Newton, Hilbert, Einstein, and Lonergan

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To help the reader gain an appreciation of Lonergan’s achievement of Modern Macroeconomic Field Theory we will, in each section, print leading excerpts, then highlight the key concepts of those excerpts. We will comment on the historically-significant advances in geometry of Euclid and Hilbert, in physics of Newton and Einstein, and in macroeconomics of Lonergan.

  • Euclid’s great achievement was his rigorous deduction of geometry.
  • Hilbert’s great achievement was his employment of implicit definition to reorder Euclid’s geometry.
  • Newton’s two great achievements were unifying the isolated insights of Galileo and Kepler into a unified system of mechanics and his invention of the calculus.
  • One of the great achievements of Einstein was the invention of the field theories of Special Relativity, General Relativity, and Gravitation.
  • One of Lonergan’s several great achievements was his systematization of macroeconomic phenomena in his Modern Macroeconomic Field Theory. He combined the technique of implicit definition introduced by Hilbert and the concept of a field theory developed by Faraday and Einstein; and he developed an explanatory macroeconomics, which is general, invariant, and relevant in any instance. (Continue reading)

Understanding All in a Unified Whole

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“if we want a comprehensive grasp of everything in a unified whole, we shall have to construct a diagram in which are symbolically represented all the various elements of the question along with all the connections between them.” [McShane, 2016, 44]

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A Contrast: Understanding Pricing in Macrostatic DSGE and in Macrodynamic FMD

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.I.  Introduction: Contrasting Diagrams and What They Represent

We contrast an assumption and description with an explanation and interpretation.  We contrast the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) assumption and description of pricing as exogenously given and acceptable as a lead item in analysis of economic problems with Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics’ (FMD’s) explanation and interpretation of pricing in the light of the significant functional pretio-quantital flows, which explain the dynamic economic process. (Continue reading)