Chapter 16: The Three Scientific Faults in Some Neo-Institutionalism

I very much admire the seriousness of Geoff’s journey. My own tends to a random walk lacking an absorbing barrier, so I admire people who take a definite direction (compare McCloskey, 2021a.) True, deciding on the direction too early, for example in graduate school, as most economists do, can make for dogmatism. “Normal science” was Thomas Kuhn’s word for it.

Geoff and I are decidedly abnormal. The orthodox, normal scientist calls us both “curmudgeons,” as though we say the unusual things we say – in my case, for example, “statistical significance is disjoint with scientific significance” or “ideas resulting from liberalism, not capital or exploitation, caused the Great Enrichment” – merely to irritate normal people. We don’t. Geoff and I declare upon oath that we are merely earnestly stumbling toward the truth. No joke. And no unscientific dismissal by calling us “curmudgeons.”