Friday, January 10, 2003

New Name



I've decided that a name that describes my core ethos might be better for this blog. And while I'm not sure I really do ascribe to the theory that "Anything Goes" (and I'm sure Paul K. Feyerarbend didn't) I am sick of the people who want to ascribe some priviledged position for their kind of knowledge. I know of no theories that are perfect in their explanatory power - every theory has some Popperian falsification.

Yes some theories are "better" than others, but they are not inherently better - they are merely better in use. It is a nonsense to describe Newtonian mechanics as better than Einstein's relativity (or vice versa), but equally it would be silly to use relativity to describe the motion of billiard balls on a table or Newtownian mechanics to describe the cosmos.

What frustrates me is the fact that economists all acknowledge that their favourite theories have "failings", but still want to debate their relative merits rather than describe their utility. (and yes, as d-squared and blogorrhea have slugged it out some of the competing theories have harder maths to use).

Anyway - as anything goes - so will I. I know I only started five days ago but I'm taking a two week break.

(Note: When I get back I'll figure out how to make one of those comments fields work)

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