| The Romantic Economist: Imagination in Economics |
| Richard Bronk, Cambridge University Press, 2009, 380 pages, £17.99. |
| In 1959 the scientist and novelist C P Snow famously bemoaned the chasm that had developed between the ‘two cultures’ of the arts and the sciences. He argued that it hindered understanding and problem-solving. It was a divide that had been growing probably since the dawn of the scientific method but was certainly pushed wider by the Romantic reaction against Enlightenment rationalism. Economists have always identified with the rationalist, scientific side of the gap. In this book, LSE political economist Richard Bronk calls for us to embrace our inner romantic and unleash the power of imagination in our work. |
| Although I put this facetiously, he makes some serious points. The book has been taken up with delight by the usual critics of economics – those who dislike the application of analytical methods and especially mathematics and statistics to human life, and think the financial crisis disproves everything economists have ever said. Nevertheless, the author makes some sensible points about the limits of conventional economics, as well as some arguments for new methods which in my view would turn it into a different subject entirely – poetry, perhaps. |
| His call for romanticism has several facets. One is that economists should place more reliance on imagination and human character. This is pushing at an open door as the insights from psychology which give us behavioural economics have been taken up widely. Many economists accept that for some questions this is an extremely valuable approach. |
| Another is an emphasis on the nation as the key unit of economic analysis. This is much more questionable. The dynamics of globalisation and localisation have made the natural geographic units for our work much more fluid than in the past. Besides, I personally shudder at the notion of encouraging nationalism at a dangerous time like the present. The lessons of the 1930s certainly apply to this issue. |
| The third aspect is one to which economists ought to pay more attention, and that is the unknowability of certain things – radical uncertainty (‘black swans’) about the future, or about how millions of interactions between individuals will turn out, or moral and cultural questions. The book calls for entirely new modelling approaches, “based on lessons from Romanticism”, to complement standard economic theory. The author gives examples such as models based on complexity theory and network dynamics, which do already have a small fan base in the economics profession. He also – and here I part company with him – suggests abandoning modelling altogether for some questions. Perhaps models will not carry us everywhere, but in that case we are doing economic history or even literature, not economics. |
| All in all, this is a thought-provoking book for those who like to think about the nature of economics. It is not one of the many rants against economics, but rather an intelligent critique and challenge to our methods. In the end I’m happier on the rationalist side of any chasm, if we have to err one way or the other. Supplementing the power of conventional economics with other types of models is one thing; ditching it altogether in favour of the power of imagination is best left to poets. |
| Diane Coyle |
| Enlightenment Economics |