In conversation with

Exordium

The Strangeness of the Discipline

A Good Scientific Conversation

It is a cliché that no author writes a book on his or her own. Authors are in a conversation with others and their books have only meaning because of that conversation. A book like this also comes about in numerous conversations, more than I ever will be able to recall. I have appropriated ideas and insights at will. Sometimes I have been able to acknowledge their authors but more often I am unable to trace the origin. After I had been writing quite a bit about attention, and was quite content with myself for having that insight, Olav Velthuis, then still a graduate student, coyly pointed out that he had implanted the seed in my brains in a conversation we had. I had completely forgotten about that particular conversation. Then again, I noticed how others have appropriated ideas that came up in conversations with me without any acknowledgment. So it goes. Authorship is an invention anyway. The conversation comes first.

I do want to acknowledge some of my conversation partners over time. There are too many to list. I hope that those who look for their name will find it, and that others can get an idea in which conversational context to place the making of this book. Maybe I go a little too far in listing all these conversations but I am thinking of those who limit their reading of the book to this part.

Joop Klant was the first who showed me that you can seriously reflect on what economists do. I was still a student at the time and felt encouraged when he took me seriously as well. As my academic father he inspired me to do it differently from the way he had done it. Too bad he is not among us anymore as I surely would have liked to have convinced him. With Wim Driehuis I experienced what it is to practice the craft of economics, and in particular the building of large scale econometric models. I continue to draw on that experience. Neil de Marchi drew me into real conversations that were not only about economics, Keynes and all that, but also about personal stuff. Ever since I took it for granted that it is possible to combine the academic and the personal, although I have to admit that it does not happen too easily in the academic world. He also helped me to cross from the prudent academics of the Dutch to the more heroic academics of the Americans. At Duke I ran into Martin Bronfenbrenner, Roy Weintraub, Bob Tower, Craufurd Goodwin, and so many other serious and honest economists. Roy Weintraub in particular taught me how to change my Dutch (read German) style of writing into the pointed and argumentative way you tend to write in English; above all he made me stand up for my own position. He himself has thrown himself on the nitty-gritty of the way economists have constructed general equilibrium theory. I suspect that he will find my account too sweeping. We'll see.

Most important of all were the students at Duke, Janet Seiz, Robert Fisher, and Rod Maddock in particular, and Janet most of all. I have never talked so intensely with someone about economics and everything else as I did with her. In our endless conversations I not only found out what I wanted to think but also how to put it in proper English. With Neil de Marchi we organized a seminar on methodology in which also Bruce Caldwell participated. Early Saturday mornings we had special sessions with students in other disciplines. I still remember those discussions. It was my first experience with talking across disciplines. And don't let me forget my first students who taught me how strange economics sounds when you hear it for the first time. The passion of an Anne Pitcher was inspiring as was Linda (I forgot her last name) who showed me how you can do a final exam with citations only. And what to think of that disciple of Ayn Rand — with my bad memory for names I forgot hers entirely — who gave me a really hard time and forced me to reconsider a few of my fixed beliefs.

The result of all those conversations was a methodological thesis about rational expectations economics in which I suggested that economists argue on various levels of discourse. I actually thought that I could turn that thesis into this book. How wrong I was. The first who showed me that so much more was at stake were Allan Janik and Alasdair MacIntyre who were at Wellesley College when I got there to teach. They pointed me at a literature that I did not know about. Wellesley proved to be a stimulating intellectual environment good for conversations within economics and with other disciplines. I learned from Michele Grimaud, a French scholar, who taught me how to read a text seriously. (It was in style when he responded years later to my questions about how he was doing: "Very well, apart from the fact that I am dying." A year later he was dead.) With him, Owen Flanagan, a philosopher, Marilyn Sides, an English scholar and Marty Brody, a composer, we discussed great texts. Those were the times I came alive intellectually. As Wellesley is a good liberal arts college its economists had an open mind and proved to be an important source for my methodological inquiry. Chip Case, Jim Grant, Rod Morrison, Julie Matthei, Bruce Norton, Len Nichols, David Lindauer, Sandy Baum, Carolyn Shaw Bell and others were good to talk with. And so were students, like Susan MacDonald (who is still doing my editing), Denise Goldfarb, Paula DeMasio, and Kim who introduced me to the subject of modernism in a paper that she wrote for a class of mine.

The book that I subsequently did instead of this one got me to talk with well-known economists. The title Conversations with Economists still seems appropriate. I cannot claim to be in conversation with them, but it felt as if I was for then. Let me make an exception for Rob Clower. I wanted to interview him for a sequel. We were sitting in a revolving restaurant and he was talking about how he came into economics when his father died from a stroke. He suddenly began to sweat profusely; I thought of hyperventilation but it turned out to be a stroke. Later, after he recovered somewhat, we continued our conversation but I never did that sequel and the interview did not come out. That was too bad as he sure gives a fascinating and most critical perspective on economics. He is one of the rare characters that the profession has.

This was also the time that I made new intellectual friends. They happen to span the political spectrum with Don Lavoie, the Austrian economists, somewhat to the right, Jack Amariglio, the postmodern Marxist, somewhat on the left, and Phil Mirowski somewhere in the middle. Only the conversation with Don ceased as he passed away, much too early. Conversations with these people keep me honest. The same could be said for conversations with outsiders like Barend van Heusden, a literary scholar, and various philosophers whose company I seek so now and then.

Around then I got involved in the conversation of economic methodologists, with Bruce Caldwell, Wade Hands, Mark Blaug, Uskali Maki, Warren Samuels and many others. For a while they were my intellectual community. I wonder now how this book will fall in their midst. Uskali, my colleague at Erasmus, will probably find some inconsistencies. And Mark Blaug, if he is in a good mood, will strongly object.

Most important, however, proved to be the contact with this economic historian and Chicago economist to boot, Donald McCloskey. Weintraub had showed me McCloskey's paper on rhetoric just when I was about to finish my thesis. After reading it I was almost convinced to give up on my thesis as it said it all and so much better. When I met him for the first time — it was on a snowy ride from an airport in Vermont to Middlebury College — we got into a conversation about art, economics, rhetoric and a great deal more. That conversation still continues. In the meantime we organized a conference, together with Robert Solow, we decided to write a textbook (about to be finished, finally), I moved to her university in Iowa, she changed her gender and took up a part time position at my current university, and one daughter of mine has her new name, Deirdre. I owe much to her, to her gentle art of writing and brilliant art of conversation. I dedicate this book to her.

With Dave Colander I wrote a book on the profession, The Making of an Economist. He continues to be an important source about where the profession is at. In Iowa I ran in again other economists but the outstanding experience was the POROI seminars in which I learned rhetoric and a great deal more. The interdisciplinary setting proved to be most inspiring once again. I even learned about deconstructive accounting and Victorian poetry.

With a position at George Washington University I landed in the square mile with the highest concentration of economists anywhere in the world. The IMF, the Wold Bank, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury were all there. It must have gone to my head somehow. Colleagues like Bob Goldfarb, Joe Cordes, Bryan Boulier, Tony Yezer, Bradley, Stephen Smith, Bob Dunn, as well as (graduate) students like Tim Leonard, Jennifer Meehan (both of whom co-authored articles that formed the basis of chapters in this book), were good for a great deal of conversation. Nothing autistic in that department. Will I ever experience as much collegiality as I did there?

Once back in Holland I began to learn from people outside the economic conversation. In numerous symposia, lectures, debates I learned what it takes not to be an economist. I began to talk more with journalists (although I had started that conversation already with David Warsh in Boston), politicians and other, "normal" people. They undoubtedly influenced my perspective on the world I came from. With Harry van Dalen I wrote on Dutch economists and got to think about the role of attention. The collaboration is smooth and stimulating so we are continuing it. My current position is in the department of art and culture. I am ambiguous about being outside an economics department. I miss the constant presence of economists around me but enjoy the company of people who are into the sociology and history of the arts — Ton Bevers, Suzanne Jansen, Berend Jan Langenberg, Wouter de Nooy, and others. They may be surprised to read what I have been working on the last few years, as it is not directly focused on the economics of the arts. Erik Pruijmboom knew all the time but then he was my attentive and most reliable assistant who, with his structure and organization, compensated for my lack of structure. Ticia Herold has taken over to protect me from my tendency to do too much at the same time.

My most important source is the weekly seminar on cultural economics. Every Friday people from various disciplines gather in my room to discuss a text for one and half a hour. Wilfred Dolfsma, Olav Velthuis, Irene van Staveren, Barbara Krug, Hans Abbing, David Kombrink, PW Zuidhof, Rick Dolphijn, Anna Mignosa, Susana Graca, Willem van Schinkel, Swalomir Magala, Almut Krauss, Simon Goudsmit, Gjalt de Graaf, Bregje van Eekelen, Bregje van Woensel, Onno Bouwmeester, Sophie Schweiker and many others play a greater role in my intellectual life than they may realize. The same is the case for Jos de Beus, a political scientist, and Harmen Verbruggen, an environmental economist, with whom I run every Sunday mainly to be in a conversation about everything and nothing. They have become important sparring partners.

Because the course on the philosophy of science in Maastricht really got me going with this book and because quite a few students have commented on draft chapters, I promised that I would acknowledge them. Well, here they are.

The academic conversation tends to be quite global. I am thinking of the conversations I am having with David Throsby (Australia), Bruno Frey (Switzerland), Francesco Louca (Portugal), Michael Hutter (Germany), Kazuko Goto (Japan). The conversations with Bruno Frey have been especially important because some of our interests overlap so clearly although I could never match his many other interests. I discussed this work in numerous seminars and conferences all over, too many to mention here.

This conversation of mine draws on personal resources as well. My father (a preacher who really had no idea what I was doing but admired it anyway), my mother, brother (who got me to do the Conversations book) and sisters, children (Renée, Lucas, Anna and Rosa), girlfriends, and friends, they all have affected me in some way or another. They will understand that I am not getting specific. I make an exception for one, my partner in life.

She has probably been the toughest conversation partner for me, at least when it comes to economics. She keeps saying that she is practically minded and that all this academic talk seems to her a lot of idle and rather inflated chatter. When I talk about my stuff, like this book, she will say something like: "what's your point", "I don't get it", "why is this relevant?" And when I try to be to the point and say something about the importance of attention and conversation, she will roll with her eyes and exclaim: "Wow, that is news to me. Listen, psychologists talk about nothing else. People need attention? Where have you been?" Frankly, all I can do in that situation is laugh at first. Then I realize that I love her for her directness and her being different, and subsequently look forward to the upcoming seminar that makes sense of what I am writing. Yet it is she who encourages me to write the way I do, simply and as directly as I can. If you like it, please thank her. I like it this way so I dedicate the book to her as well.

The writing took place in intermittent phases, in places away from the hustle and bustle of daily life of a Dutch Professor and a father of four. I began in a Tudor house in eastern Massachussetts, with thanks to Elias Khalil, and continued in various places in Holland, especially in the house of Louk Hulsman, an emeritus professor of Erasmus university who taught me a few wise lessons as well, and finished in Catania, Sicily where the people are hospitable and the food is excellent. You will see that Italy and its people get an important supporting role in the story that is about to unfold. Each time I sent my drafts to Susan MacDonald who turned it into the prose that it is now. I am most grateful for her dedication and effort.

The norm prescribes me to exonerate all these people from any fault or error in this book. That is obvious. But they share a responsibility and are somehow part of the conversation that this book intends to be.

But we are not only in conversations with people. A major part of the conversation takes place by means of reading and interacting with texts, with articles, books, newspapers, and journals. The custom is to bring the reader into the literature that I have drawn from by means of many citations. Alasdair MacIntyre once told me that he left out the citations because the writing should make clear what his sources were. I kept a few citations here and there just to be polite and to be helpful. At the end of each chapter I reveal my most important sources and references that the reader may use to explore the argument further.