Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Catching-up from Way Behind. A Third World Perspective on First World History
- Chapter 2 Recent Trends in Economic Theory — Implications for Development Geography
- Chapter 3 A Schumpeterian Theory of Underdevelopment - A Contradiction in Terms?
- Chapter 4 Competitiveness and Its Predecessors - A 500-Year Cross-national Perspective
- Chapter 5 Diminishing Returns and Economic Sustainability: The Dilemma of Resource-based Economies under a Free Trade Regime
- Chapter 6 Economics: ‘The Dismal Science’ or ‘The Never-ending Frontier of Knowledge’? On Technology, Energy and Economic Welfare
- Chapter 7 Production Capitalism vs. Financial Capitalism – Symbiosis and Parasitism. An Evolutionary Perspective and Bibliography
- Chapter 8 Globalization in the Periphery as a Morgenthau Plan: The Underdevelopment of Mongolia in the 1990s
- Chapter 9 Increasing Poverty in a Globalized World: Marshall Plans and Morgenthau Plans as Mechanisms of Polarization of World Incomes
- Chapter 10 An Early National Innovation System: The Case of Antonio Serra’s 1613 Breve Trattato
- Chapter 11 Innovation Systems of the Past: Modern Nation-States in a Historical Perspective. The Role of Innovations and of Systemic Effects in Economic Thought and Policy
- Chapter 12 The Other Canon: The History of Renaissance Economics
- Chapter 13 Benchmarking Success: The Dutch Republic (1500–1750) as Seen by Contemporary European Economists
- Chapter 14 Mercantilism and Economic Development: Schumpeterian Dynamics, Institution Building and International Benchmarking
- Chapter 15 Development and Social Goals: Balancing Aid and Development to Prevent ‘Welfare Colonialism’
Chapter 12 - The Other Canon: The History of Renaissance Economics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Catching-up from Way Behind. A Third World Perspective on First World History
- Chapter 2 Recent Trends in Economic Theory — Implications for Development Geography
- Chapter 3 A Schumpeterian Theory of Underdevelopment - A Contradiction in Terms?
- Chapter 4 Competitiveness and Its Predecessors - A 500-Year Cross-national Perspective
- Chapter 5 Diminishing Returns and Economic Sustainability: The Dilemma of Resource-based Economies under a Free Trade Regime
- Chapter 6 Economics: ‘The Dismal Science’ or ‘The Never-ending Frontier of Knowledge’? On Technology, Energy and Economic Welfare
- Chapter 7 Production Capitalism vs. Financial Capitalism – Symbiosis and Parasitism. An Evolutionary Perspective and Bibliography
- Chapter 8 Globalization in the Periphery as a Morgenthau Plan: The Underdevelopment of Mongolia in the 1990s
- Chapter 9 Increasing Poverty in a Globalized World: Marshall Plans and Morgenthau Plans as Mechanisms of Polarization of World Incomes
- Chapter 10 An Early National Innovation System: The Case of Antonio Serra’s 1613 Breve Trattato
- Chapter 11 Innovation Systems of the Past: Modern Nation-States in a Historical Perspective. The Role of Innovations and of Systemic Effects in Economic Thought and Policy
- Chapter 12 The Other Canon: The History of Renaissance Economics
- Chapter 13 Benchmarking Success: The Dutch Republic (1500–1750) as Seen by Contemporary European Economists
- Chapter 14 Mercantilism and Economic Development: Schumpeterian Dynamics, Institution Building and International Benchmarking
- Chapter 15 Development and Social Goals: Balancing Aid and Development to Prevent ‘Welfare Colonialism’
Summary
TYPOLOGIES OF ECONOMIC THEORY AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE TWO CANONS
It has been said that economics as a science – or pseudoscience – is unique because parallel competing canons may exist together over long periods of time. In other sciences, periodic gestalt-switches terminate old theoretical trajectories and initiate new ones. In a paradigm shift, the scientific world moves from a situation in which everyone knows that the world is flat to a new understanding that the world is round (Kuhn 1970). This occurs in a relatively short time. In economics, the theory that the world is flat has been coexisting for centuries with the theory that the world is round. In this chapter we shall argue for the existence of an alternative to today's mainstream theory: the continuation of the canon that dominated the worldview of the Renaissance – The Other Canon. Using a metaphor from Kenneth Arrow, ‘this tradition acts like an underground river, springing to the surface every few decades’.
We argue that during the Cold War, the ‘underground river’ of Renaissance Other Canon economics all but disappeared from economic theory, and that it is time to reintroduce it. Traditionally, The Other Canon has been resurrected in times of crisis, such as national emergencies, which bring production – not barter – into focus. This occurs, for example, when an exclusive focus on barter has caused financial bubbles that subsequently burst, when nations are engaged in serious catching up with the prevailing world leader (as the United States, Germany and Japan were in the nineteenth century, or as Korea was until later), or when a war economy forces a national political system to focus on production (of materials of war). Today the urgency of a change of focus towards the Renaissance conception of economics is particularly acute in the Third World and in formerly communist Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, this is not where economic theory is produced.
The two different canons are based on fundamentally different worldviews, which can be traced back to ancient Greece, where the term ‘economics’ was first used. Today's standard economics is based on a mechanistic, barter- and consumption-centred tradition – static in the tradition of Zeno – that explains human economic activity in terms of physics.
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- The Other Canon of EconomicsEssays in the Theory and History of Uneven Economic Development, pp. 379 - 420Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2024