Ponder the abyssal strangeness of this nugget from the introduction to G.L.S. Shackle’s Epistemics and Economics:
“Economics is thought endeavoring to understand a world of action based upon thought.”
Writing like this is what draws someone to study economics, not the sterile discussions of the opportunity costs of choosing an apple over an orange, or indifference curves. But Shackle belongs in the Philosophy Department, not the current math/physics-infested Econ departments. Economics itself deserves to be placed entirely within the Philosophy department, because it is philosophical. There is nothing quantifiable about economic life. Ironically, it is the very antithesis of quantifiable activity. An entire graduate program could be developed that would be devoted to the works of Shackle, Henri Bergson, Alfred Shutz, Husserl, Hayek, Lachmann, and Keynes. A program that returns to the ideas of radical subjectivism, that conceived of time as a prison, and us as the prisoner, trapped in the ever-vanishing “present”, between a walled-off “past” and an unknown future. A program that removes the “science as measurement” prejudice from a field that contains nothing measurable.
