----------
> From: GBRansom@aol.com
> To: tch-econ@lumen.elon.edu
> Subject: Samuelson and 'dumbed down' economics
> Date: Friday, October 10, 1997 7:48 PM
>
> Samuelson's _Economics_ was the original dumbing
> down of economics. As Samuelson himself reports, it was
> designed originally to be entertaining and attract to
> freshmen interested in careers as engineers. Samuelson
> supplied the perfect economics for these engineering
> wannabees. The error concerning socialism and comparative
> economic systems was an intellectual error that comes
> naturally to the Samuelson approach to 'doing economics' as
> a 'tool' construction game .. and engineering project of tool
> making. In the process of making 'tools' on the engineering model,
> Samuelson successfully transformed economics from a
> successful explanatory enterprise which provided plausible
> contingent causal explanations into a engineer's game of cartoon
> mathematics and cartoon 'models' -- most of which are
> incoherent from the point of view of humans and the market process ..
> as well as inconsist with one another in important
> ways. (Recall Lucas's famous remark about the incompatibility of
> what economists teach on M, W, F in micro with what they
> teach in macro on T, Th). At the L.S.E. in the 1930's the principle
> textbook used for introducing students to economics was
> Frank Knight's _Rish, Uncertainty, and Profit_. A generation of
> great economists came out of the L.S.E. during this period.
> In the period since Samuelson, economics has triumphed as a formal
> engineering technology, but not as an explantory science. Indeed,
> in many ways, contemporary economics is not even as logically sound
> as it was in the age of Knight.
>
>
> Greg Ransom
> Dept. of Philosophy
> UC-Riverside
> gbransom@aol.com
> http://members.aol.com/gregransom/hayekpage.htm
>
>
> In a message dated 97-10-10 15:42:33 EDT, you write:
>
> << Reading Rik's comment about dumbing down economics I was asking
myself:
> so,
> what else is new? I have used several editions of Samuelson's Economics.
In
> the thirteenth edition there is a claim that the book is "authoritative,
> comprehensive, and clear." Since
> Nordhaus joined Samuelson, I note considerable dumbing down of the
world's
> greatest text book in economics. In the Chronicle of Higher Education
> (October 10, 97), Samuelson is quoted: "There always were rumors that a
> little old lady in white sneakers really wrote my book." I suspect that,
of
> late, it is a little old lady in white sneakers who has been writing the
> book.The pity is that Samuelson
> is not even aware of it. I have used several other text books. In 1995
when
> the fifteenth edition came out, I thought: Why not, again,
> go for the real thing? I did adopt the book. But when I read it in the
> summer of 1995 I was disgusted. It has not only been dumbed down
> but there are gross errors in it. A couple of the gems hidden in its
> pages:" Tiny Hong Kong, with a land area one-millionth that of
> resource-rich Russia..." That would make Russia's area about 400 million
> square miles,more than twice the surface area of the entire earth. This
is
> what professors in many countries where the book is available in
> translation (46 languages) will be teaching economics
> students. (See page 532, column 1.) Then again on page 715: "Some
> economists claimed that socialism could not work. The Soviet
> experience proved them wrong." THIS, IN A BOOK PUBLISHED IN 1995! But
then
> turn back to page 263. "By the end of the 1980s,
> socialist Eastern Europe and the Soviet empire were in ruins..." Did the
> same author write this book? On page 370: "The slope of the
> line is -45 degrees." I was thinking: Why pick on poor Mankiw for
dumbing
> down economics lessons?
> I paintakingly collected all such rare wisdom in the fifteenth edition
of
> Samuelson and Nordhaus and sent it to McGraw-Hill's
> economics editor. When I did not hear from her I called. I was assured
that
> my comments would be passed on to the authors.I called
> many months later. It was still sitting in the editor's office.
>
>
>
>
> Ravi Nair
> Professor of Economics
> Box 80
> West Virginia Wesleyan College
> Buckhannon, WV 26201
>
> nair@wvwc.edu
> (304)473-7780
> >>