# An Economist Looks at His Science The Rhetoric of Economics by Donald McCloskey **URL:** **By** Tom G. Palmer **Published:** March 1, 1987 --- “McCloskey’s thesis is that methodology in general, in attempting to legislate in advance for a science, blinds science to its own real character and impoverishes the quality of the scientific conversation.” In his remarkable work on the method of the social sciences, _Theory and History_, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises sought to demonstrate the firm scientific grounding of the sciences of man. He did so by insisting on a methodological dualism, one method for the sciences of nature, another for the sciences of man. The latter, notably economics, seeking to repeat the successes of the “hard sciences,” notably physics, had embraced the account of scientific progress most commonly associated with that success: positivism. Positivism was the philosopher’s attempt to legislate for the scientific practitioner, to demarcate science from nonscience, sense from nonsense, and thereby to reclaim the traditional crown of the “Queen of the Sciences” for philosophy. Mises, fully aware of the dangers of this legislative effort for the rigor and fruitfulness of the science of economics, opposed this movement by setting forth his own method, a method of rigid _a priori_ deduction of apodictically certain truths from the axiom of human purposiveness. The grounding axiom of action, in good neo-Kantian fashion, was a category (or pure concept) of mind, directly accessible to us and justifiable by means of a kind of transcendental deduction. > McCloskey’s thesis is that methodology in general, in attempting to legislate in advance for a science, blinds science to its own real character and impoverishes the quality of the scientific conversation. The Misesian position is an attractive one, since economists do not in fact “live up” to the standards established for them by positivism, and _cannot_ do so and still have anything really interesting to say about man’s economic life. But a reading of some of Mises’s own work in economics (e.g., _The Theory of Money and Credit_ \[1912\] and _Nation, State, and Economy_ \[1919\]) reveals that he too “failed” to live up to the standards of his own methodology, that his work was in fact richer than his own account of it. A new book by economist Donald McCloskey, editor of the _Journal of Economic History_ and an important player in several debates in economic theory and history, helps to explain this gap between the practitioner’s account and his actual practice. _The Rhetoric of Economics_ is a notable performance, weaving together insights plucked from McCloskey’s study of philosophy, rhetoric and literary criticism, the history of science, mathematics and statistics, and economic theory, and the debates that have rocked the profession in the last hundred years. McCloskey’s basic thesis is that methodology in general — and positivism in particular — in attempting to legislate in advance for a science, blind science to its own real character and impoverish the quality of the scientific conversation. By claiming to know in advance what will or will not count as good science, methodology is hubristic: “It would be arrogant to suppose that one knew better than thousands of intelligent and honest economic scholars what the proper form of argument was.” (p. 139) By claiming to eliminate the taint of “subjectivity” and to separate “facts” from mere “values,” positivism attempts the impossible, the elimination of the scientist from science. And by claiming that the history of science corresponds to its vision of proper science, positivism falsifies history. With what would McCloskey replace positivist methodology? With a better understanding of the rhetoric of science. Rhetoric, he is quick to point out, need not be trivial (although it is one member of the _trivium_ in the classical division of arts), for it emerges in the course of his book that rhetoric is the art of conversation, which McCloskey, along with many other modern and classical philosophers, identifies with rationality itself. “Rhetoric,” writes McCloskey, “in the sense used here . . . is reason writ large.” (p. 118) Good science is not algorithmic, i.e., a set of unthinking rules for generating results, but is instead good conversation, conforming not with the rigid dictates of methodology but with the standards of civil discourse and persuasion. “What distinguishes good from bad in learned discourse, then, is not the adoption of a particular methodology, but the earnest and intelligent attempt to contribute to a conversation.” (p. 27) Good conversation means the attempt to persuade (and, conversely, the willingness to be persuaded), and that means rhetoric. To abandon methodology for rhetoric is not to open the gates to barbarian hordes of subjectivists and irrationalists, for the move “is not an invitation to irrationality in argument. Quite the contrary. It is an invitation to leave the irrationality of an artificially narrowed range of argument and to move to the rationality of arguing like human beings. It brings out in the open the arguing that economists do anyway — in the dark, for they must do it somehwere, and the various official methodologies leave them benighted.” (p. 36) McCloskey is at his best when, having cleared a space for his work by showing the failure of positivism as an account of the sciences, he embarks on an examination of the rhetoric employed in economic discourse. His inspections of several seminal contributions to economics, notably an article by John Muth on rational expectations and Robert Fogel’s historical work, _Railroads and American Economic Growth_, reveal a rich dimension of “tacit” knowing at work and display unacknowledged rhetorical appeals that are inconsistent with the official positivist methodology to which the authors offer their allegiance. Notable also is his chapter on “The Rhetoric of Significance Tests,” where he unveils the way in which the notion of statistical significance is passed off in the literature as equivalent to economic significance. McCloskey the statistical expert demolishes the scientistic appeal to statistics as a substitute for human judgment. What the book is about, in essence, is the necessity for according a role for human agency in all human endeavors, or, in other words, recognizing that there is no rule for the application of a rule. Ultimately, a human agent has to decide — whether tacitly or explicitly — whether something is significant, good, persuasive, etc. Aristotle was well aware of this when he warned us in his _Nicomachean Ethics_ against seeking a set of exhaustive rules (an algorithm) for good moral conduct; there are no absolute rules for living well, but there is the _phronimos_, the wise man, and the _spoudaios_, the good man, and action should be oriented toward the lives such men lead. But in embracing this understanding and insisting on the recognition of human agency, McCloskey goes, well . . . too far. “A science,” insists McCloskey, “is a class of objects and a way of conversing about them, not a way of knowing truth.” (p. 105) “The very idea of Truth — with a capital T, something beyond what is merely persuasive to all concerned — is a fifth wheel, inoperative except that it occasionally comes loose and hits a bystander. If we decide that the quantity theory of money or the marginal productivity theory of distribution is persuasive, interesting, useful, reasonable, appealing, acceptable, we do not also need to know that it is True.” There are, of course, persuasive things that are not true, e.g., those slippery and commonly committed logical fallacies, and this would seem to indicate that some role for truth should be retained. There are good reasons for rejecting the concept of Truth inherited from Neoplatonism, in which Truth is hypostasized and made timeless, but can’t we hold on to truth with a small _t_, even a very small _t_? McCloskey is clearly aimed in the right direction when he states, “The scale . . . is of man, not of God.” (p. 152) Man is a finite being and cannot be held to standards appropriate to the infinite, but that does not imply that truth as the goal of discourse should be abandoned altogether. A slight emendation, however, reinstating truth with a small _t_, dynamic and emergent rather than static and timeless, would leave the bulk of McCloskey’s case standing. There is a further problem with McCloskey’s argument. McCloskey is ambiguous on just what the implications of his argument are for the actual practice of economics, or of any other science. On the one hand, McCloskey argues that “the absorption of rhetorical thinking in economics will not precipitate any revolution in the substance of economics.” (p. 174) On the other hand, he argues that “predicting the economic future is, as Ludwig von Mises put it, ‘beyond the power of any mortal man.’ What says it is beyond his power is the very economics used to make the prediction. The economist for a big bank predicts that interest rates will fall after Christmas. If before making the prediction he has not placed his net worth in margin loans on bonds he is behaving either irrationally or self-deceivingly. He claims to know the expected value of the future, yet for some reason chooses not to take the unlimited wealth that such Faustian knowledge can bring. He is willing for some reason instead to dissipate the opportunity by the act of telling others about it. If he does not really know the future, then he does not face such an opportunity. But then he has perhaps no business talking as though he does.” (p. 16-17) If McCloskey is willing to eliminate such forms of discourse as prediction of the future (and there are others), then his approach would indeed change the character of economic science. And the admission of forms of inquiry (sources of truth) such as introspection into economic discourse would also significantly change the character of the science. McCloskey may be too modest in the payoff he claims for his effort; the character of economic science may indeed be revolutionized by the kind of philosophical questions raised in _The Rhetoric of Economics_. A few comments may also be in order on the implications for political economy of the case McCloskey makes. McCloskey is eager to allow all forms of rational discourse into the tent, extending his open-mindedness to the political conflicts arising from economic investigation (whether free trade is good or bad, whether wage labor is exploitative, etc.). McCloskey does not disguise his own preference for liberty and liberal capitalism, but shows his willingness to be open-minded to the arguments for competing systems. > We should recognize that open-mindedness is itself a stance, just as the argument for freedom of speech is a positive stance for liberty, and not merely a skeptical claim to be unable to choose among arguments. But does not his own approach, his own elevation of conversation to the ethical standard by which rationality is to be judged, itself lean him toward liberalism? For the market economy _is_ a kind of a grand conversation, a forum for persuasion (and not merely for information exchange). Adam Smith asked (rhetorically) in _The Wealth of Nations_ whether “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another” was an original principle of the mind or, what he held to be “more probable,” “the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech. . . .” (Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 25) In his lecture of March 30, 1763, he was more forthcoming: “If we should enquire into the principle in the human mind on which this disposition of trucking is founded, it is clearly on the natural inclination everyone has to persuade. The offering of a schilling, which to us appears to have so plain and simple a meaning, is in reality offering an argument to persuade one to do so and so as it is for his interest. Men always endeavour to persuade others to be of their opinion even when the matter is of no consequence to them.” (_Lectures on Jurisprudence_, Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 352) Of course we should be open-minded toward the arguments for socialism and other coercive arrangements, but we should recognize that this very open-mindedness and tolerance are themselves a stance, just as the argument for freedom of speech is a positive stance for liberty, and not merely a skeptical claim to be unable to choose among arguments. _The Rhetoric of Economics_ is a very rich book, one that should be read by social scientists of all sorts who seek to improve the scientific character of their discipline. Philosophers will learn something of the practicality of philosophical speculation from the work, while others in the humane sciences will benefit from the extended discussions of the rhetoric of science. And McCloskey’s superb and entertaining writing style (only occasionally marred by overly clever swipes at positivism) itself stands out as an example of good writing. _Tom Palmer is the editor of Humane Studies Review_