Book Description
Reflection without Rules offers a comprehensive, pointed exploration of the methodological tradition in economics and the breakdown of the received view within the philosophy of science. Professor Hands investigates economists' use of naturalistic and sociological paradigms to model economic phenomena and assesses the roles of pragmatism, discourse, and situatedness in discussions of economic practice before turning to a systematic exploration of more recent developments in economic methodology. The treatment emphasizes the changes taking place in science theory and its relationship to the movement away from a rules-based view of economic methodology.
Customer Reviews:
A General Survey of Recent Developments in Science and Economic Theory..........2007-09-03
I really enjoyed this book. But reading the above review made me reconsider the importance I had originally attached to this book. This book should be read by any economist interested in the philosophy of science. And that is why I read it. But I would not suggest that the interested reader begin their study with this book. It is a general survery book. I did not really learn anything truly substantive. What I did take away from this book, however, was a better awareness of what I would like to study in the future. It can also serve as a useful reference for drawing the scattered intellectual puzzle pieces together.
Which brings me to one final point concerning the above review. It seems a bit unfair to criticize the author of this book because he failed to extensively discuss writers who have made important contributions to the theory of economics and the philosophy of science. Throughout the book, indeed at the beginning of nearly every section (roughly every 15-20 pages) the author takes great pains to remind the reader that his discussion of these selected topics are by no means exhaustive -- "they do not even scratch the surface" as he aptly puts it. This gives the reader a deep appreciation of the complexity that has become his study.
I think it is important that more books like this be written. For students like me interested in this field, general survey books like these are much more accessible than scholarly journal articles. The advantage of books like these is that they attempt to collect and present coherently the recent developments that have occurred in certain intellectual circles.
Still muttering in the outhouse.......2002-02-17
This is a confused and confusing book. It has some value as a comprehensive survey of thought on the topic of methodology in economics and it signals that when Popper is understood as a critical rationalist instead of a falsificationist then he makes a lot of sense. Larry Boland has been saying that for 20 years and he should have got more credit from Hands.
The book has three goals. First, to provide a survey of recent developments in the field of economic methodology. Second, to survey contemporary science theory as it relates to economics. The third "is to convince the reader that we should change the subject". He suggests that we should abandon the 'off the rack' or 'shelf of scientific philosophy' approach to the philosophy of science. This approach consists of trying to find out what economics should be doing to qualify as a proper science. His alternative is to encourage people to think the issues through afresh, to explore the full range of approaches that are available to economists in place of the traditional, largely positivist/empiricist philosophy of science.
Methodology has never had much of a profile among working economists and it had to make its way by attaching itself to the history of ideas in economics which at least had some academic credibility in the form of journals and conferences. However this meant that both the historians and the methodologists occupied a kind of outhouse behind the place where all the real economists lived.
The overwhelming defect in the book is the way that Hands describes the Received View in the philosophy of science as a mixture of logical positivism and falsification interpreted in a positivistic way. Popper is unfortunately misrepresented as an eccentric contributor to the Received View, largely under the influence of Lakatos and his followers, especially Latsis and Blaug. Under the influence of this misrepresentation of Popper's though, a generation of scholars have wasted much of their careers, playing in a kind of intellectual sandpit, off to the side of economics and philosophy, without making a significant contribution to either.
The weakness of the Hands book is demonstrated by the neglect of Boland and Wong. The latter is mentioned twice, in passing, without any hint of the way that he shredded the program that won Samuelson a Nobel Prize for his contribution to methodology in economics. Boland is noted as a man who always resisted the "falsificationist" interpretation of Popper and his books are cited without any hint of the riches to be found in them. This contrasts with the whole chapter on "The Sociological Turn" and hundreds of pages devoted to other dead-ends like feminist methodology.
The best part of the book is where the author depicts Popper as a critical rationalist and shows how this makes sense of Popper's hitherto rather confused exposition of situational analysis and the rationality principle. Given this grasp of Popper (provided by Boland in his first book in 1982) Hands should have junked all the previous pages of criticism of Popper's non-existent "falsificationism".
Unfortunately, despite the wide scope of the material covered in this book, the Austrian school of economic thought does not get a decent mention. Caldwell did rather better on this in "Beyond Positivism". It is quite likely that when Popper is fully understood as a critical rationalist, and when his theory of research programs is also understood, then a highly synergetic combination of Popper and the Austrians may be possible. That man Boland (again) was just about there with his Popper/Hayek model in 1982.
In conclusion, if Hands can fully consolidate his new understanding of Popper (instead of making out that this is a development in Popper's thought rather than his own) then his next book should be shorter and much more helpful. One more thing, it is imperative that work on methodology should be conducted in close contact with work in progress on theories and real-world problems. As C Wright Mills wrote in the superb appendix to "The Sociological Imagination" on intellectual craftsmanship, there must be interludes of discussion of problems, theories and methods, not just one or other of the three. Otherwise the economics profession will never take notice of the mutterings in the outhouse.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Southern Economic Journal, published by Southern Economic Association on July 1, 2002. The length of the article is 2110 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Reflection without Rules: Economic Methodology and Contemporary Science Theory. (Book Reviews).
Author: Bruce Caldwell
Publication:
Southern Economic Journal (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 2002
Publisher: Southern Economic Association
Volume: 69
Issue: 1
Page: 200(4)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Amazon.com
Alan G. Robinson and Sam Stern, university professors who have served as advisors on creativity to organizations around the world, believe that the proper combination of imagination and originality is what really pumps life into a company. In Corporate Creativity: How Innovation and Improvement Actually Happen, they cite numerous examples of its place in celebrated corporate success stories and suggest various ways that other firms can harness it. Focusing on six elements they see as essential to the process, the authors show how virtually any institution can work to encourage creativity within its ranks.
Book Description
Corporate Creativity consistently connects creative outcomes to the actions that really made a difference to them. Through detailed real-life examples from organizations around the world - including British Airways, Du Pont, Fujitsu, General Motors, Hallmark, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Japan Railways East, Kodak, Universal Studios, the United States Forest Service, and enterprises in the USSR - the authors show how improvements and breakthroughs actually happen in organizations.
Customer Reviews:
Analysis of Corporate Creativity.......2005-05-05
Corporate Creativity is a good read for a person that is looking for examples of how innovative thinkers working within a company came up with ideas to save money. The book is riddled with examples of stories that come from large organizations that made cost-cutting measures due to the creativity of an employee. Examples come from many large corporations, such as 3M, American Airlines, and Kodak. The authors outline their six essential steps to corporate creativity, alignment, self-initiated activity, unofficial activity, serendipity, diverse stimuli, and within company communication, providing real examples all along the way.
There is one particular aspect of the book that could use improvement. I thought it would be better for Robinson and Stern to weave a few narratives throughout all six of their steps. Instead, they jump around between numerous stories that fit any single step. This leaves the reader puzzled as to how the authors steps can be applied to their organization. Seemingly cookie cutter examples that fit perfectly within the parameters of what Robinson and Stern are trying to describe are all the reader gets. The stories are good and entertaining, yet there is no explanation as to how these examples can be digested by the reader and used in their own corporations.
This is a good starting point for anyone that is intersted in corporate creativity. By focusing on examples and not implementation, the authors have not provided clear means for the utilization for their ideas. Examples that have worked in other companies are great, but the authors do not provide enough help in linking those past occurences with the problems of the current reader.
Quite entertaining, not meant as a "how to".......2002-02-04
The book is good for readability and wide ranging examples of creativity in action. But I found its gee-whiz diagnoses of why and how creativity occur are superficial. OK for a weekend reading and maybe idea generation, but not of much practical use.
"The Power of the Unexpected".......2001-09-05
"Most companies are aware that their creative 'potential' greatly exceeds their creative 'performance.' The problem is that they don't know what to do about it. We believe that this potential cannot be realized until people recognize where it actually lies. Consider this. Most creative acts, as they now occur in companies, are not planned for and come from where they are least expected. It is impossible to predict 'what' they will be, 'who' will be involved in them, and 'when' and 'how' they will happen. This is the true nature of corporate creativity, and it is here that a company's creative potential really lies. For corporate creativity, the real power is in the unexpected" (from the Introduction).
In this context, in describing the corporate creativity, Alan G. Robinson and Sam Stern write that a company is creative when its employees do something new and potentially useful without being directly shown and taught. And they argue that in every unexpected creative act the following six essential elements are key to promoting consistent corporate creativity:
1. 'Alignment' is the degree to which the interests and actions of every employee support the organization's key goals. Strong alignment requires three things: *clarity about what the key goals of the organization are, *commitment to initiatives that promote the key goals, *accountability for actions that affect the key goals.
2. 'Self-initiated activity.' The majority of creative acts in companies are self-initiated, which explains why they are unanticipated by management. To promote it, companies only have to unleash what is already present. The key is an effective system for responding to employee ideas, which must have five characteristics. The system must: *reach everyone, *be easy to use, *have strong follow-through, *document ideas, *be based on intrinsic motivation.
3. 'Unofficial activity,' work done without direct official support, is what makes it possible for a company to go where it never expected to. Every unexpected creative act begins with a period of unofficial activity, which might be a matter of minutes or years.
4. 'Serendipity' combines a fortunate accident with sagacity. Fortunate accidents can be promoted through strategies that provoke and exploit accidents. Sagacity can be promoted by expanding the company's human potential beyond its immediate needs.
5. 'Diverse stimuli.' A stimulus can either push someone in a completely new direction or give that person fresh insight into what her or she has already set out to do. There are four strategies companies can use to promote diverse stimuli: *identify stimuli and provide them to employees, *rotate employees into every job they are capable of doing, *arrange for employees to interact with those outside the company who are likely to be the source of stimuli, *create opportunities for employees to bring into thr organization stimuli they get on their own.
6. 'Within-company communication.' Every company tries to ensure effective communication between employees who depend on each other to do their work. However, most organizations overlook the importance of unanticipated communication between employees who do not normally work together. And these exchanges of information often lead to unexpected creative acts. There are three ways a company can promote within-company communication: *provide opportunities for employees who do not normally interact with each other to meet, *ensure that every employee has a sufficient understanding of the organization's activities to be able to tap its resources and expertise, *create a new organizational priority: all employees should know the importance of being responsive to requests for information or help from other employees.
Finally, Robinson and Stern write that "If the six elements are implemented in your organization, its overall level of creativity will certainly rise. Use them yourself and you may very well find yourself in the middle of a creative act...Our journey led us to 'discover' the power of the unexpected. Your journey will lead you to 'realize' it."
Highly recommended.
A Good Reaf!.......2001-03-17
You can improve your company's performance by increasing creativity and fostering employee innovation. Most creative acts are unexpected. Therein lies your company's creative potential. A company is creative when its employees do something new and possibly useful without being directly shown or taught. Creativity can and should happen in every organization, including companies with highly standardized procedures. While creativity is intangible, you can see the results of it in your company's improvements and innovations.
The first five chapters provide an overview of creativity, outlining the six essential elements that creativity requires. In the following chapters, the authors detail the six elements, provide several case studies to illustrate their points and show how to achieve each aspect of creativity. This is a useful book for any executive who wants his or her company, and the people in it, to realize their full creative potential. We at getAbstract recommend this book to managers and executives in any industry.
Well written with interesting examples.......2001-01-15
Corporate Creativity is not an oxymoron. Robinson and Stern have written a good book that explores the key concepts that based on their work differentiate a creative organization from those that are not. The key steps the book expands on are that corporate creativity stems from: 1-Allignment 2-Self initiated activity 3-Unofficial activity 4-Serendipity 5-Deverse Stimuli 6-Within-company communication
While the book does a great job at exploring these concepts and gives excellent examples, what I found lacking was the "how-to" compontent.
As the author of Aha! - 10 Ways To Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas, I am always looking for good books on the topic I am most passionate about. As far as creativity books, this one takes a unique perspective, the corporate rather than the individual. I applaud their work in this regard. Their examples are well-researched, and from a variety of industries.
If you are looking to dig deep into the field of organizational creativity, this is an excellent addition to your library.
Average customer rating:
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Innovative farming and sustainable production: Innovative Rural Action Learning Areas (IRALAS) : case studies from Malawi
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Book Description
Twenty years ago the world slept, confident that biomedical science would protect it from devastating plagues. Our wake-up call sounded at the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. Then came more unfamiliar pathogens in its wake, such as the West Nile virus. Meanwhile, the neglected diseases of the third world, including malaria and African sleeping sickness, festered—their victims salvageable only by unaffordable, patent-protected drugs. Robert S. Desowitz traces the histories of these diseases and the issues we must confront—the morality and legality of patent laws, the effect of global warming on epidemics, public support for the commercial biochemical industry, the growing dissociation of clinicians and public health professionals, and the terrifying shadow of bioterrorism.
Customer Reviews:
Summary of recent parasitology efforts, worldwide.......2006-08-17
Robert Desowitz has been associated with many of the recent efforts to control various diseases which are faciliated by parasites; I found his comments quite interesting.
Desowitz makes another hit!.......2004-04-05
Anything written by Robert Desowitz is always a worthwhile read and his most recent (and sadly, last) book, "Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus: Tales of Parasites, People, and Politics," is no exception. His expertise on human infectious diseases is impressive and thorough. He discusses the little known behind the scenes intrigues involved with the attempts to deal with malaria, West Nile virus, sleeping sickness, and several others. He also discusses the effects of global warming on the spread of infectious diseases and the roll of DDT in suppressing malaria specifically.
His earlier book "The Malaria Capers" (1991) should be read to completely understand the political and even criminal problems that developed within the malaria vaccine research program. These problems landed some researchers in jail and certainly have added little or nothing to the development of a real vaccine. The vaccine is tough to produce (over 70 years has so far been spent on the search) because of the fact that Plasmodium falciparum (the main target of vaccines as it is the main, if not sole cause of death from malaria) is a much more complicated organism than the viruses and bacteria that are usually the target. Because of its complex life cycle and ability to avoid antibodies and parasite-killing cells, malaria soon escapes any vaccine so far developed. A Colombian researcher is supposed to have a 100% effective vaccine, but Desowitz is rightly skeptical. As I have not heard of the vaccine being a success, I will have to agree.
The problems with DDT discussed by Desowitz demonstrate that there are no easy ways out. DDT was banned for agricultural use pretty much worldwide within a decade or so of the publication of "Silent Spring." It has since been used for malaria control in many tropical countries and has been more than a little effective, even though resistance had built up in mosquitoes in many areas (Desowitz notes that some researchers think that resistance was helped by the huge amounts of DDT used in agriculture). There is little doubt that DDT was an ecological disaster when it was broadcasted throughout the environment. However, there is a movement to ban it even for anti-malarial use and Desowitz thinks that this may be wrong-headed. I am not sure about this, but I have to admit that it is not my children that are at stake (at least for the present time!) However, if global warming continues (and neither Desowitz nor I am under any illusion that it will not) we may be staring at a lot of new and old diseases (including malaria- which has already made some incursions) that we never thought possible in the United States. Then we may sing a different tune!
This book should be read by everyone concerned about emerging diseases, whether brought by terrorists or (much more likely) by human movement and trade. It should also open anyone's eyes to the lack of efficiency of many organizations charged with the protection of world and national health.
Book Description
Twenty years ago the world slept, confident that biomedical science would protect it from devastating plagues. Our wake-up call sounded at the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. Then came more unfamiliar pathogens in its wake, such as the West Nile Virus. Meanwhile, the neglected diseases of the Third World, including malaria and African sleeping sickness, festered—their victims salvageable only by unaffordable drugs. Robert S. Desowitz traces the histories of these diseases and the issues we must confront—the morality and legality of patent laws; the effect of global warming on epidemics; public support for the commercial biomedical industry; the growing dissociation of clinicians and public health professionals; and the terrifying shadow of bioterrorism. 8 b/w illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
This is not a reader-friendly book.......2003-02-09
I'm fascinated by the ongoing war between us humans and the bacteria, viruses and other pathogens that plague us. So, I was eager to dive into Robert Desowitz's interestingly titled book, Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus: Tales of Parasites, People and Politics. The book jacket told me that Desowitz is a leading epidemiologist and the author of four other books in the area. I was hoping to get his insider's view of epidemic or emerging diseases, what's being done about them, and the politics of drug development and distribution.
There was certainly some interesting information in the book. I hadn't known, for example, that the global ban on DDT that flowed from Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring inadvertently had a devastating effect on the worldwide effort to eradicate malaria. Desowitz points out that spraying DDT in the houses of people living in malaria-ridden regions was the mainstay of the eradication program, and was very successful. DDT sprayed inside houses did not contribute significantly to the thinning of birds' eggshells that was a key feature of Carson's argument, but saved the lives of millions of people. Unfortunately, this anti-malaria use of DDT was swept away along with other more destructive uses.
Desowitz also provided an interesting blow-by-blow description of the 1999 outbreak of West Nile Virus in New York. Given the risk of bioterrorism, it's sobering to learn that it took from May 21 to September 25 for health authorities to notice and begin to get a grip on the outbreak. Each of twenty or so local, state, and Federal agencies noted one piece of the puzzle--the death of wild birds, the death of birds at a zoo, and human illness and deaths, but it took forever for anyone to see the whole picture. Let's hope that our health agencies have improved both their alertness and their inter-agency communication. If not, we're in big trouble if bioterrorists strike again.
And, in his defense, Desowitz doesn't pull any punches whether he is criticizing health authorities for their failure to communicate, drug companies for their greed or environmentalists for their sometimes one-sided zeal.
What the book does not offer is coherency or consistency. In the midst of presenting one topic, Desowitz jumps into another, and as often as not interrupts that with a wisecrack about something else entirely. Early on, he describes his fellow epidemiologists as cranky and idiosyncratic. That's exactly how he comes across in the book. For me at least, that idiosyncratic style really got in the way of what he was trying to say. I kept comparing this book to Richard Preston's The Demon in the Freezer, which is a model of devoted reporting, clear thinking and vivid writing. The contrast with Desowitz's book could not be stronger. I had the impression that Desowitz basically phoned this one in, with predictable results.
Robert Adler, ...
An authoritative look at the politics of infectious disease.......2003-01-10
Epidemiologist Robert Desowitz gets a few things off his chest in this free-swinging frolic through the world of infectious disease with an emphasis on politics, economics and human stupidity. In particular he is not happy about the fact that Big Pharma doesn't find it cost effective to work on drugs that might save lives in Third World countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa, home of not only Ebola and AIDS, but perennial killers, malaria and sleeping sickness. He also doesn't care for the bad press that DDT has endured since "Saint Rachel" (p. 57) published her manifesto, averring that "Nothing has ever equaled DDT" for controlling "the spineless blood-suckers" (mosquito, fly, and tick vectors) that bring dengue, plague, typhus, malaria, sleeping sickness, etc. to our bodies, and that "no essential public measure [the use of DDT] has been so irrationally denied."
He makes a good case. It seems that in saving the ospreys and the eagles and other creatures of the wild we have allowed disease vectors to flourish resulting in countless millions of human lives lost. This surprising point of view, however, made me realize once again the false dilemma that we often put ourselves into, that of "them or us." At some point our rapacious desire to increase our numbers at the expense of our planet home must cease otherwise we will find ourselves alone with our mice and rats, our cows and pigs, our cockroaches and our sheep, our fields of soy and wheat and selected parasites, the rest of nature gone the way of the dodo. Do we need more humans or do we need to save the rainforests? My answer is that we must reduce our numbers and live in concert with nature. Desowitz does not consider this larger point of view in his book. I wish he had.
He does however realize that we need more doctors and that medical schools ought to let more people in. He notes that "Innovative teaching methods can now accommodate double the student intake," wryly adding that "This may force some of the doctors in the new, bigger pool to switch from BMWs to Buicks." (p. 56) He also wants the World Health Organization reformed, calling it "a too-politicized body, best at furnishing slogans." (p. 124) Additionally, he would like to see the big pharmaceutical companies rearrange their priorities. He laments how a drug called DFMO is being manufactured for use as a depilatory to rid women of "uglifying facial hair" (with glossy ads in Cosmopolitan, Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines) when it could better be used to fight sleeping sickness in Uganda and Sudan. (p. 146) One of his pet peeves is the way our patent laws work in respect to genetic material--part of a "patent or perish" syndrome. (See page 203.) He quotes then US secretary of commerce Ronald Brown to the effect that genetic material can be taken from you and patented for the enrichment of someone else and there is nothing you can do about it. (p. 200) Some people call this "biopiracy." (p. 193)
In the later chapters (which are among the most readable in the book) Desowitz considers the possibility that global warming will result in tropical diseases moving north. There's not only that possibility, but with the rise in the sea level and the flooding of rivers, temperate-zone sewers may back up just as they do in, e.g., Bangladesh, and we will have cholera right here in River City.
Desowitz, who is retired and therefore free to say what he thinks without fear of losing some grant or offending those who could torpedo a career, lets the chips fall where they may. Near the end of the book he recalls a Nigerian who supplemented his income by selling human waste. It seems that the Nigerian "pagan farmers...believed that the white man's protein-rich diet made his feces a superior fertilizer"(!) He ends the book with a not so facetious suggestion that maybe we ought "to exploit this bounteous natural gift" to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. (pp. 241-242)
This sort of candid, tell-it-like-it-is expression is the strength of this mostly readable book. Its weakness is that sometimes Desowitz loses awareness of his readership and gets too technical and too minuscule in his delineation of disease politics. He has a few axes to grind and sometimes stays too long at the wheel. Furthermore it is apparent that sometimes he is addressing other professionals and working out old disputes in a way that the general reader cannot fully appreciate.
Bottom line: Desowitz is authoritative and unbeholden to political correctness; he is passionate and writes with verve and a sometimes striking expression, and he is clearly an expert on the material covered.
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