Macroeconomists should be scientists seeking better explanations of the economic process of production and exchange.

By “scientific development” I mean development in mathematics or natural science.  The scientific horizon recedes, expands when there occurs a crisis in existing methods, procedures, theories, assumptions which are seen to fail.  They cannot handle known results, known observations or data, known conclusions. … Thus we have the triple revolution of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud; the revolutions effected by Galileo, Newton, Einstein, quantum theory; the revolution in mathematics that began with analytic geometry and the calculus, went on to Riemannian geometry, and then to the developments in algebra due to Galois and to later developments  In these cases there was a radical revision in concepts. (CWL 10, 92-3)

In the following passage, substitute “macroeconomists” for “scientists; and substitute “scientific macroeconomics” for “science.” Continue reading →