META-ECONOMICS

Abstract

Meta-Economics suggests a new approach to the study of economies. Having run the gauntlet from political to mathematical, statistical, and pictorial economy, the science seems to have exhausted the available .media ofexpresion. Moreover, the further it has advanced themore It seems to have removed itsclf from the possibility of comprehensive presentation. To convey once more a complete picture, it is suggested that .economics return to the source from which it carnephilosophy, integrating the subject not with itself but with its philosophic hinterland. A trend to this effect is indicated by the renewed attention paid by scholars to elementary concepts, and their analysis of these concepts not so much on an elementary as an advanced level. But this seems not enough. For concepts may be elementary in economics, and yet be themselves nothing but derivations oí more fundamental laws. As a result, deeper undérstandíng of economic concepts can only be gained if we go beyond economics-hence the term JHeta-Economicsinto the realm where its laws link up with those of physics, chemistry, or biology. In this manner it will not only be possible for the economist to discern the basic unity underlying all disciplines but he will also be able to return into his own field with principies which were previously hidden, but whose existence in economics may now be revealed as a result of analogous laws in other areas. Though no university seems as yet ready to offer Meta-Economics either as a special subjeet or as a special approach, the more the field is disintegrated under the impact of zoth Century specialization, the more imperative it becomes as a general approach. This is particularly so because, as in other areas of scientific endeavor, the greatest advanees at all times have also been accomplished by those whose search for likenesses transcending all differences has led them beyond the limiting -confines of their original subjects. Thus, men such as Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Keppler, Goethe or Einstein, made their tremendous contributions to scientific advance as a result of their conviction that the laws governing different disciplines were fundamenta'lly nothing but variations of a single theme; and that recognition of the universal law would automaticaUy reveal the nature of all special laws. But even in economics, the greatest contributions have come not so much from economists laboriously accumulating evidence or translating it into mathematics, as from speculative philosophers whose creative intuition was stimulated by their interdisciplinary knowledge and led to those famous hunches and guesses which were destined to transform their field. Meta-Economics proposes to resurrect this approach in a time when conventional economícs. seems to have come to the end of the lineo