1 McCloskey, Donald, The Rhetoric of Economics (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 28–32, 46–50, 174–85, hereafter McCGoogle Scholar. I shall also occasionally refer to a second book, McC(K), which McCloskey brought out at Cambridge University Press in 1994: Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics. In it he gives a great number of knockabout rejoinders to his many critics without ever confessing to bewildering them with any inconsistency.

2 It is sometimes pretty rough playfulness, from which it must be pretty hard for its objects to derive any fun, as in the dialogical drubbing that McCloskey, metes out in McC(K), pp. 247–64Google Scholar, under the title, “Reactionary Modernism: The Rosenberg.“

3 Rosenberg allows microeconomics some success in making “generic” predictions about the directions of change (R, p. 60).

4 For instances of people sophisticated about economics who share—or take the lead—in misgivings about orthodox economic advice on these points, see a number of pieces in American Prospect, 16 (Winter 1994), especially those by Hutton, Will and Eatwell, John.Google Scholar I recall the point about causing unnecessary recessions from a lecture by Wynne Godley at Dalhousie; and I have been generally inclined towards the misgivings I have expressed by talking to my Dalhousie colleague, John Cornwall, and reading his counter-orthodox works.

5 After referring to Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, McCloskey cites Friedman, Galbraith, Samuelson, Hirschman, Heilbroner, Schelling, Coase, Becker, Fogel, Olson, Buchanan and Kirzner as “modern masters.” At most, one of them—Friedman—is known for having proceeded directly from a microeconomic perspective to championing market solutions for issues about fiscal policy.

6 That is the way in which economic theory is used by Gauthier, David, in his Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).Google Scholar

7 Cf. the title of R, Economics: Mathematical Politics or the Science of Diminishing Returns?, which the text of the book curiously leaves somewhat in the air.Google Scholar

8 This notice is not intended to offer a balanced review either of Rosenberg's book or of Hausman's. I am omitting to discuss many fine things in both books: in Rosenberg, for example, a beautiful synopsis of evolutionary theory and a powerful argument for not taking economics to be an evolutionary science; in Hausman, richly informed discussions of the history of the philosophy of economics from Mill to the present; illuminating and painstakingly worked out examples of economic thinking; and (relegated to an appendix) an elegantly succinct synopsis of the current state of the philosophy of science. I am even leaving out what Hausman regards as his central insight, about how the concept of rationality, as much normative as descriptive, gives equilibrium theory its distinctive character (H, pp. 277–80).

9 It is a statement typical of social science in asserting a regularity that depends upon rules, for example, in this instance, that saucers are made to go with cups.

10 “Neurofuzzy” is the actual brand name of an electronically sophisticated—computerized—vacuum cleaner produced in Japan for marketing there. It is perhaps too fine and costly to be sold in the United States or Canada under any name.

11 See Eatwell, John, “Citizen Keynes,” American Prospect, 16 (Winter 1994): 115–24, at 119–20.Google Scholar

12 At H, p. 226, Hausman offers, in a footnote, a paragraph less than enthusiastic in tone about institutionalism, which does name an interesting variety of authors who might be collected under that name. I am not objecting to Hausman concentrating on other topics, or to what he does on the topics on which he concentrates—it is closely studied and continually judicious. I am just noting the limits to his preoccupations.

13 Though on the point of its relation to the semantic conception of scientific theories, the exposition is so intricate that it gives a confusing general impression (H, pp. 72–78).Google Scholar

14 Giere, Ronald, Explaining Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), in particular Chapter 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 Mackie, Cf. I L., The Cement of the Universe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 62, on INUS conditions.Google Scholar

16 McCloskey would not have us worry about whether economics qualifies for the appellation ‘science’ (McC, pp. 42–46, 54–57; McC[K], chap. 5). I thoroughly sympathize. Alternatively, I am quite ready to go along with any movement to reduce the honorific force of the term ‘science’ by aligning it more closely with Wissenschaft. As things stand, however, consumers of economics may sensibly resist the tendency of economists (McCloskey among them, as above) to claim for themselves the prestige of the term. Some years ago, Paul Samuelson published something proudly entitled The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson. Would it not have been more suitably called something more modest, like Collected Ingenious Arguments?

17 I wish to thank Robert Nadeau for advice and encouragement, and to note with pleasure that I am in agreement with the position that he takes that whatever success economics is going to have as a science must accommodate intentionality rather than dispense with it (“Economics and Intentionality,” in Quebec Studies in the Philosophy of Science, edited by Marion, M. and Cohen, R. S., Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science [Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995]).CrossRefGoogle Scholar