Taking part in the discussion were: Eric O’Connor, Michael Gibbons, Philip McShane and Eileen de Neeve. Click here.
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Lonergan’s “Circulation Analysis” : A Discussion
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Category Archives: Philip McShane
The Einsteinian Context: Curvature and Relativity
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)
Connecting the Notions of “Concomitance,” “Solidarity,” “Implicit Definition,” “Functional Relations,” and “Unification”
Concomitance is, I would claim, the key word in Lonergan’s economic thinking. (Philip McShane, Fusion 1, p. 4, ftnt 10)
“Concomitance,” “solidarity,” “implicit definition,” “functional interdependence,” and “unification” are the key principles foundational to the equation(s) providing the scientific general explanation of the organic economic process. Proper adherence to the principles ensures a unification of all explanatory conjugates and relations of the unitary system. The patterns in the terms and relations of the explanatory equation(s) would be isomorphic with the actual patterns constituting the process of velocitous (dynamic) production and exchange. (Also click here)
Consider the theoretical significance and, thus, the explanatory significance of the following:
There is a sense in which one may speak of the fraction of basic outlay that moves to basic income as the “costs” of basic production. … the greater the fraction that basic income is of total income (or total outlay), the less the remainder which constitutes the aggregate possibility of profit. But what limits profit may be termed costs. Hence we propose ….to speak of c’O’ and c”O” as costs of production, having warned the reader that the costs in question are aggregate and functional costs…. [CWL 15 156-57]
Thus, we have basic Outlays-Incomes, c’O’ +c”O” = I’, explanatorily conjugate with – i.e. functionally related to – basic expenditures, E’ = P’Q’, which are implicitly defined in the following implicit equation:
P’Q’ = p’a’Q’ + p”a”Q” [CWL 15,156-62].
As was pointed out regarding Einstein’s general relativity equation – Gab = 8πTab – in our treatment The Einsteinian Context: Curvature and Relativity (click here and here): 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
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
Alan S. Blinder’s Article, “Team Transitory Had a Point About Inflation”
Alan S. Blinder (Princeton) had an article in The Wall Street Journal of Thursday, 7/20/2023 entitled Team Transitory Had a Point About Inflation
Prof. Blinder was concerned to relate the recent and current inflation to a) supply shocks, and b) the speed and extent of the manipulation of interest rates. Our concern is rather to explain the recent and current inflation as formally caused, and thus explained rather than merely postulated, by a) the recent flooding of the economic system – given its capacity, state of productivity, and phase of expansion – with trillions of dollars of free money, and b) the circulation of those inflation-causing trillions of free dollars throughout a) tiers of income and propensities to consume, and b) two productive operative circuits and the unproductive Redistributive Function, in which sit the stock and bond trading operations. Continue reading
Lonergan’s Challenge to the University and the Economy
To access, download, read, and be enlightened by Philip McShane’s book, Lonergan’s Challenge to the University and the Economy, click here.
Philip McShane’s Lecture Notes for a Yearlong Course in Physics
In our Acknowledgments and Thanks, we state that Philip McShane understood Lonergan’s macroeconomic dynamics better than anyone else. His lecture notes below provide evidence of the brilliance McShane brought to Lonergan’s Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics..
We have also insisted that those with a strong background in mathematics and physics are the best candidates for genuine understanding and appreciation of the revolutionary nature of Lonergan’s macroeconomic dynamics. Similar patterns in physical science and in macroeconomic science are similarly understood and formulated!
To access, download, read, and be enlightened by Philip McShane’s two sets of lecture notes in physics, click below on either of the titles of the two lectures.
“Mathematical Physics: Statics” Lecture notes prepared for a yearlong course on mathematical physics, a first year honors course in University College Dublin, 1959-1960.
“Mathematical Physics: Dynamics” Lecture notes prepared for a yearlong course on mathematical physics, a first year honors course in University College Dublin, 1959-1960
“Lonergan’s ‘Circulation Analysis’: A Discussion”
“Lonergan’s ‘Circulation Analysis’: A Discussion” is a typescript from a tape made at the Thomas More Institute, Montreal, November 4, 1979. Taking part in the discussion were Eric O’Connor, Michael Gibbons, Philip McShane, and Eileen de Neeve. Nicholas Graham made the transcription. Click, on the underlined title within this very paragraph.
Philip McShane above
Why Most Macroeconomists Haven’t Yet Flocked to Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics
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The Notion of Organic Unity; Macroeconomic Field theory as a Unified, Systematic Whole
.1. Introduction
Lonergan’s treatment of the intelligibility of the plane circle provides to us a clue. In the basic insight defining the plane circle, – that all radii are equal – all the interrelated concepts tumble out together in an intelligible unity. The all-together intelligibility points to a template for explanation in the macroeconomic field; it fore-casts a singular unified intelligibility of the dynamic, organic economic process. In the sweeping comprehensive act of understanding, all the abstract explanatory conjugates explaining the dynamic economic process are “yoked” together by their functional relations to one another. The interdependencies of the flows which constitute the whole dynamic system are grasped in a solidary whole. And the patterns of the formulation are isomorphic with the patterns in the objective, unitary economic process. The principle of unity and wholeness is a single, comprehensive intelligibility. (Continue reading)