经济学为什么不是一门演化科学 - "Why Economics Is Not an EvolutionaryScience"


拉波格最近指出，“正如细菌学使医学发生了彻底的革命一样，人类学注定要带来政治和社会科学的革命”。就其对经济学的评论而言，不只他自己作为一个杰出的人类学家深信经济学需要革新。拉波格言辞之间流露出对经济学的指责和劝告，他道出了自己和许多具有相同研究思路的科学家的感觉。这可以被看作是那些在现代人类学、人类社会学、心理学及生物学方面从事认真研究的人的一致意见。这种意见认为，经济学无助地落后于时代，不能以现代科学的资格处理它的议题。其他政治和社会科学也蒙受了这种耻辱，也许同样处于无可辩驳的境地....


M.G. de Lapougerecently said, "Anthropology is destined to revolutionise the politicaland the social sciences as radically as bacteriology has revolutionised thescience of medicine." In so far as he speaks of economics, the eminentanthropologist is not alone in his conviction that the science stands in needof rehabilitation. His words convey a rebuke and an admonition, and in bothrespects he speaks the sense of many scientists in his own and related lines ofinquiry. It may be taken as the consensus of those men who are doing theserious work of modern anthropology, ethnology, and psychology, as well as ofthose in the biological sciences proper, that economics is helplessly behindthe times, and unable to handle its subject matter in a way to entitle it tostanding as a modern science. The other political and social sciences come in fortheir share of this obloquy, and perhaps on equally cogent grounds. Nor are theeconomists themselves buoyantly indifferent to the rebuke....