Robert A. Solo

Problems of Modern Technology

(1974). Problems of Modern Technology. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 859-876.

The Dilemmas of Technology: A Review Article

The state of US technology and trade as reported by a conference held on August 22, 1976, is reviewed and criticized for its irrelevance to the problems of lagging US technology. The original report emphasizes technology transfers and trade with the Soviet Union and with less-developed countries. The unprecedented rapid loss in technological leadership by the US since 1973 was attributed by two conference members to a drain of technical personnel from the productive sector to military and space programs and to a mixed bag of economic complaints. The author discredits both hypotheses and is no more convinced by other arguments pointing a finger at multinational activities or government regulations. He finds little interest in making a systematic study of the countries now out-performing the US, but suggests that such a study and a recognition of the multifaceted nature of our economy is essential.

Boulding Among the Structuralists

The character of structuralism is given as studies of systems of perception wherein the author interposes in organizing element between observation and perception. The organizing element for Piaget is the cognitive structure, for Foucault the epistime, for Kuhn the paradigm, for Solo ideology, and for Boulding the image. The idea and significance of “the image” in Bouldings book The Imageis analyzed and the place of that work in Bouldings grand project, to create a universal science, is indicated.

The Character of the Discourse

We refer to statements such as these: Population will increase whenever wages are higher than the income needed for subsistence. When population increases in relation to the available land, productivity declines. Productivity increases through capital accumulation. Capital accumulation accelerates through individual saving. Entrepreneurs increase production until marginal costs equals marginal revenue. They invest to the point where marginal yield equals the rate of interest. The rise in consumption spending lags behind the rise in the level of income, and the higher the level of aggregate spending the lower the proportion of consumption expenditure. Class struggle is the dynamic force that accounts for all social and economic change and development. Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Normative Theory and Other Components of Political Economy

We have differentiated, according to the character of their statement, the areas of discourse pertinent to the policy sciences. In the first instance, our emphasis has been on empirico-judgmental discourse about conceivably experienced phenomena and event, where a statement’s claim to credibility must rely on a personal judgment of the evidence pro and con.

Social Science, Policy Science

This chapter will emphasize, as characteristics that determine the character of, and the rules appropriate for the discourse of economics, its reference universe as a social science, and its role as a critical component of the political system as a policy science.

The Mathematization of Empirico-Judgmental Discourse

The most distinctive change in economics and to a lesser degree in the other social sciences during the past half century, has been the mathematization of its language. This has been, we will argue, a crippling aberration that: (1) fails its purpose, (2) excludes a vital dimension of social phenomena from analysis, (3) perverts the process of judgment in a discourse where, necessarily, credibility derives from individual judgment.

Popper’s Progress

Our emphasis has been on Karl Popper as representing a current of thought with deep roots in history; a current of thought that we will call positivist. It reflects the belief in a process of cumulative learning through experience that has drawn mankind out of dark and ancient depths towards the single lodestone of truth. It projects an image of history as the slow but certain triumph of a reason that, through the trials of experience, learns to differentiate the true from the false, piercing the clouds of obscurantism and superstition, turning the vast spaces of ignorance into light.1

General Theory: An Empirico-Judgmental Discourse

In some respects general theory in social science approximates the philosopher’s model of science. As in the model, the theory has the demonstrated capacity to make significant generalizations: empirical generalizations about observable reality, that, because they are about the world out there, can be tested by reference to our shared experience: tested, directly or through inferential prediction. Having been made and tested, such statements sometimes fail the test. They are in Popper’s terms, falsified. What the statement inferred need not occur. What the statement denied, may happen. In these respects the generalizing theory of the social sciences is like the philosopher’s model of science.

Popper’s Canon, Kuhn’s Paradigm and Economics

Chapter 2 described the character of positivist thought and its culmination in the canon. What has been the relationship of economics to positivist thought and the canon?