Is Economics Rational?

[Rajiv]

Global Crisis: Is Economics Rational?

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/

Aristotle defined human beings as rational animals, and even today, few people would openly describe themselves as irrational; yet many are. Even so, people don't generally go around calling their decisions, choices, and expectations rational or calling what they do rational activity. Except, that is, economists! They modify sundry and diverse nouns with "rational." In a short search of a few documents, the nouns actors, calculations, choices, decisions, expectations, firms, foundations, investors, outcomes, prices, responses, self-interest, societies, systems, and workers are all modified by "rational," and some seem oxymoronic when so modified. For instance, how is it possible to have an irrational self-interest? And if that isn't possible, what sense does modifying "self-interest" with "rational" make? Why economists feel the need to continually cite the rationality of classical economics is curious. Astronomers, physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians, engineers, and others have never felt a similar need. Physicists never speak of rational forces, rational particles, or rational mass. Chemists don't speak of rational reactions. Mathematicians never speak of rational calculations. One begins to wonder whether economists can be likened to the proverbial errant child who almost automatically utters, "I didn't do it!" when everyone knows that s/he did. One wonders whether they continually call themselves and economics rational because that's the only exculpatory response they can think of when what they proclaim turns out, as it so often does, to be wrong.
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[cobben]

"Is Economics Rational?" No! Ecnomics is Political!

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy. It developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states — polities, hence political economy.

In late nineteenth century, the term "political economy" was generally replaced by the term economics, used by those seeking to place the study of economy upon mathematical and axiomatic bases, rather than the structural relationships of production and consumption (cf. marginalism, Alfred Marshall).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy