CHAPTER 1

Angles of Vision

To live is to war with trolls in heart and soulTo write is to sit in judgment on oneself

Peer Gynt—Henrik Ibsen

Like Monsieur Jourdain in Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhommewho was surprised at learning that he had been talking prose allhis life, so in everyday life persons live and interact, and know somuch about socio-economic reality without ever having attendeda formal lecture of social science. Nature of practical realm issuch, that ethical and economic considerations, get juxtaposedand merged together. The title of this chapter, is reminiscent ofHirschman's (1980) Frank E. Seidman Award Lecture, "Moralityand the Social Science: A Durable Tension," in which he considerseconomics, as a product of Machiavelli-Montesquieu-Smith-Marxtradition. From seventeenth century onwards, the weltanschaung ofthe social science, has been narrowed down, and has come to beknown as wertfreiheit. Contrary to this, Hirschman suggests, that

The mutual exclusiveness of moralizing and analyticalunderstanding may be nothing but a happenstancereflecting the particular historical conditions underwhich scientific progress in various domains wasattained.

Money income as visualized by the economists as earned, andit accrues through an application of various elements, impartingvalue and productivity, in a specific and technically describedproportion and process. These factors or elements, have beentraditionally categorized, by the economists, as land, labor, capitaland enterprise, due to their analytical properties, though theyassume specific forms and shapes, generally known as goods andservices, in the open market. Thus the act of earning, needs to beconsidered in terms of self-interest, as a motivation manifestedin behavior, as against ethical norms, and considerations, inbroader liberal arts context. An act of earning, indeed forms, thebasis of all claims, in such a construct. Various disciplines ofliberal arts, add and impart multi-dimensionality, to an otherwisestrictly economic principle of scarcity, being the environmentfor economic activity. The two archetypes, that emerge, forinstance, in the case of claims are, economy versus polity. Whileself-interest guides the individual, as the basic unit of analysisin economics, it is the public interest, that leads the way to animprovement of the performance, according to the politicalcriterion of unanimity. (Buchanan 1987) Justice consists, inan orderly and fair settlement of claims. It is of the essence ofenforceability of the contracts, and the transferability of the claims,to private property rights, as constituent part of the doctrine ofpolitical economy, given the "ideal of social institutions." (Rawls,1971) In an exchange oriented political process, agreementsemerge from the revealed preferences of individuals, into"observed political outcomes." (Buchanan, 1987) Economics in thismulti-dimensional setting, provides a set of symbols, and a syntax,to the entire debate of rights, duties and privilege in the modernsociety:

A policy oriented analysis has to be based upona complete framework broad enough to allowcomparisons of alternative choice patterns. GeneralSystems Theory essentially provides a point ofview in context of an inherent order, regularityand nonrandomness. General Systems Analysisinvolves analogies which are of course, involved inall abstractions. Thus equivalence relations may bepostulated between the systems in such a way thatmay not represent correctly, and thereby the systemmay prove to be abortive. These dangers are mostprobable in social sciences and less probable in physicalsystems, while biological systems are somewhere inbetween. Social systems do not allow a possibility ofcontrolled experiments and only experiment we knowof, is human history itself. Thus history in this contextdefines capacity of theory to survive over alternativecircumstance. A generalization based upon practicalunderstanding of present, requires of necessity,information about the past.

Thus knowledge of liberal arts, in general, imparts insights and addspower to theoretical models, thereby, making them more useful.Human knowledge, has grown tremendously, over the twentiethcentury. Thus, the capacity for analysis, can be attributed andascribed to insights, afforded by the portrayal of human conditions,in historical as well as literary narrations, and descriptions overthe ages. The point is particularly illustrated, and exemplified byHirschman pertaining to an understanding of social reality,and its "laws of change," inherent in "the kind of cognitive stylethat hinders or promotes understanding." Problem of excessiveparadigmatic thinking, and application, particularly comes out morethoroughly, in Kuhn-Popper controversy in Philosophy of Science(1965), on questions pertaining to logic of discovery, and dangersof normal science. Kuhn especially emphasizes, the pre-existingresearch agenda, of the relevant community of scientific interest,labeled by him as "rules" of "game" or "an edifice, an organizedstructure of science which provides the scientist with a generallyaccepted problem-situation." Contrast this, with the dictum A. N.Whitehead...