Category Archives: Methodology

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

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 →

Two Summaries in Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics

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.I. Summary of the Analysis: Heuristic, Observations, and Discoveries

.II. Summary of the Argument (verbatim from CWL 15, 5-6)

.III. Supplement to the Summaries

(Continue Reading)

A Philip McShane Sampler Relevant to Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics

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Philip McShane had a strong background in mathematics and theoretical physics; thus he was able to understand the scientific significance of Bernard Lonergan’s macroeconomic field theory in an Einsteinian context. (See Philip McShane in Categories in the right sidebar)

First we display, in brief, key excerpts, many of which contain analogies from physics and chemistry, relevant to the science of Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics; then we show the same excerpts more fully within lengthier quotes. Continue reading →

Why Most Macroeconomists Haven’t Yet Flocked to Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics

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Alan S. Blinder re Transitory But Not Permanent

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… the prime cause (whether it be of inequity or inflation) is ignorance. The dynamics … are not understood, not formulated, not taught….. [CWL 15, 82]

man as external agent has not the systematic guidance he needs to operate successfully the machine he controls. [CWL 21, 109]

Academia’s failure threatens economic liberty.

Lonergan realized that failure to understand correctly what is needed if the economic process is to perform well is gravely threatening to democratic liberty. That is why he undertook his serious study of economics. [CWL 15 Editors’ Introduction, xxx] Continue reading →

A Bernard Lonergan Sampler

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I hope that this Sampler will a) demonstrate the breadth and depth of the knowledge that Lonergan brought to Macroeconomic Dynamics, and b) inspire readers to compare their perspective to his in regard to science and macroeconomics. His thinking ranged over mathematics, natural science, method, history, philosophy, theology, and art. This sampler is arranged in groups of excerpts from particular books of Lonergan. Scroll down to see the arrangement.

CWL 3, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding

“The most significant book of the twentieth century,” (Philip McShane)

A distinction has been drawn between description and explanation. Description deals with things as related to us. Explanation deals with the same things as related among themselves. … description supplies, as it were, the tweezers by which we hold things while explanations are being discovered or verified, applied or revised. … [CWL 3, 291/316]

The concrete intelligibility of Space is that it grounds the possibility of those simultaneous multiplicities named situations. The concrete intelligibility of Time is that it grounds the possibility of successive realizations in accord with the probabilities. In other words, concrete extensions and concrete durations are the field or matter or potency in which emergent probability is the immanent form of intelligibility. (CWL 3, 172) Continue reading →

Scientific Generalization by Functional Analysis of the Network of Interdependent Rates

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The non-Euclideans moved geometry back to premises more remote than Euclid’s axioms, they developed methods of their own quite unlike Euclid’s, and though they did not impugn Euclid’s theorems, neither were they very interested in them; casually and incidentally they turn them up as particular cases in an enlarged and radically different field. Continue reading →

The Animal Organism and the Economic Organism

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CONTENTS:

THE STUDY OF ORGANISMS – ANIMAL AND ECONOMIC
DETERMINISM AND INDETERMINISM – DISAGREEING WITH EINSTEIN
CORRESPONDENCE IN THE CURRENT BASIC DYNAMIC, ORGANIC PROCESS; A DETERMINATE ALGEBRAIC FUNCTION OF THE FIRST DEGREE
CORRESPONDENCE IN THE SURPLUS DYNAMIC, ORGANIC PROCESS; AN INDETERMINATE POINT-TO-LINE CORRESPONDENCE
AVOIDING A VICIOUS CIRCLE OF CRITICISM
THREE IMPLICITLY-DEFINED CIRCULATORY ORGANS
THE TRANSITION TO SYSTEMATIZATION
THE ROLE OF MIND IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN AND THE ECONOMIC ORGANISMS

.1. THE STUDY OF ORGANISMS – ANIMAL AND ECONOMIC: (Continue reading)

Commonsense Economics vs. Scientific Economics

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A sound theory is a good thing to keep around. Clerk-Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory and Kirchoff’s laws of electric circuits are good systematics to consult when one is designing a system to deliver electricity. Similarly, when one is seeking to understand, affirm, and manage the economic process, a reliable, scientific macroeconomics, which both explains how the process actually works and yields norms for adaptation by human participants, is a good thing to have around.

Common sense is different from science. Common sense describes; science explains. Common sense relates things to us; science relates things to one another. And scientific Macroeconomic Field Theory, also called Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics, is different from the mere commonsense compilation of descriptive accounting aggregates called Gross Domestic Product. Continue reading →