4 シンポジウム 論 考 投稿原稿
会務報告 大会報告 Friedrich Schiller, contemporary and friend of Johann
Wolf-gang von Goethe and himself an eminent German writer and poet, was also an academic historian, who gave his inaugural address on May 26, 1798, at the University of Jena. The title of it was “What is and to what extent does one study universal history?” He distinguished between two kinds of students and scholars, a distinction that can also be applied to economists. The first is the mere “bread-and-butter student” (Brotgeleh-rter), who only works as much as is absolutely necessary to obtain the sought academic degree, job or desired social posi-tion. He is frightened of any innovation because it shatters the old school form, which he so laboriously adopted, and he de-spises all knowledge that goes above and beyond what he deems necessary to achieve his narrow goals. The second is the “philosophical mind” philosophischer Kopf, whose “efforts are directed toward the perfection of his knowledge”, who is de-lighted by “new discoveries in the sphere of his activities” and who is desirous to overcome the boundaries of his discipline. Arthur Cecil Pigou, in a similar vein, counterposed “light” and “fruit” as the goal of studies: “When a man sets out upon any course of inquiry, the object of his search may be either light or fruit – either knowledge for its own sake or knowledge for the sake of the good things to which it leads. … In the scienc-es of human society, be their appeal as bearers of light ever so high, it is the promise of fruit and not of light that chiefly merits our regard. (Pigou 1920: 2-3). Fritz Machlup coun-tered Pigou’s claim as follows: “I must confess that I am less mission-oriented than Pigou wanted social scientists to be. I would undertake my inquiry even if it promised nothing but light; but I believe that fruit can grow and ripen only where there is enough light, and that most inquiries that shed light on problems, societal or not, eventually prove useful to society. I fear, however, that a requirement to justify each research project in the social sciences by its ‘promise of fruit’ can become a stultify-ing constraint.” (Machlup 1980: 11; emphases added)
These views set the confines within which my thoughts on the matter will meander. The themes dealt with include
・The benefits and costs of an ever deeper division of labour between the various scientific subjects and within eco-nomics, starting from Adam Smith’s observation that ex-treme specialization renders one “not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but ... of forming any just judgement concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life.”
・The failure of large parts of the profession of economists to anticipate the most recent financial and economic cri-sis. According to Tim Besley and Peter Hennessy in their reply to the Queen of England, “the failure was to see how collectively [many individual risks and disequilibria] added up to a series of interconnected imbalances over which no single authority had jurisdiction. ... Individual risks may rightly have been viewed as small, but the risk to the system as a whole was vast.” The profession is said to have missed the forest for the trees.
・However, the main problem does not seem to be so much the fragmentation of solid knowledge as a consequence of an ever deeper division of labour and the lack of aggre-gating this knowledge into a comprehensive view of the economic system as a whole. According to a growing number of commentators the real problem is the dismal state of influential parts of contemporary mainstream economics, especially macroeconomics and financial eco-nomics.
・Milton Friedman’s instrumentalist position, according to which what matters in economic models is not the real-ism of the assumptions entertained, but the realreal-ism of the results derived – the predictive power of the model. Against this Paul Samuelson argued, that the prediction invariably implies the prediction that the models as-sumptions are correct, which they are typically not.
基調講演
Whom to educate, and how?
“Bread-and-butter students” vs.
“philosophical minds”
The Journal of Economic Education No.34, September, 2015
University of Graz and Graz Schumpeter Centre, RESOWI 4F, 8010 Graz, Austria
Heinz D. Kurz
The Japan Society for Economic Education
経済教育34号 5 ・There are bubbles not only in financial markets, but also
in economics. How to protect oneself and students from falling victim to them? (Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust: “In what this science teaches, it would be So hard to shun the false, misleading way; So much of hidden
poison lies therein, You scarce can tell it from its medi-cine.”)
・The role of Economic and social history and the History of economic thought in the study of economics.
・The Bologna process. The Japan Society for Economic Education
