Volume 29, Number 11 · June 24, 1982
The Way of All Flesh
By Robert L. Heilbroner
Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond
by Albert O. Hirschman
Cambridge University Press, 310 pp., $29.50; $12.50 (paper)
Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action
by Albert O. Hirschman
Princeton University Press, 138 pp., $14.50; $5.95 (paper)
Why is there a Nobel prize for economics but not for the other social disciplines? Is it because we are so in debt to economics for the welfare and happiness it has brought about? I think not. The reason for the prestige of economics lies in something quite apart from its practical successes—which are hardly cause for much celebration these days. The reason is that economics, unlike its sister disciplines, claims to be a science. Alone among the social disciplines it searches for the social counterparts of overarching physical laws like the law of gravitation; and alone among the fields of social inquiry, it risks predictions from the application of its generalizations, such as the consequences that can be foretold from the workings of the 'laws' of supply and demand.
Review, 3138 words
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