Thursday, February 3, 2011
What is a Model? How Does it Work? p.30-32
The author deviates a little from Adam Smith and explains how a new model eventually replaces an old model. The example given is about William Harvey and the circulatory system. Page 31 deals with Harvey's theory as related to the prevailing thought of the day proposed by Galen in the first century a.d. The important thought comes on page 32 "Gradually the new generation replaced the old." We should note that change from one school of thought to another is a laborious process that doesn't occur overnight. While trying to replace "land, labor, and capital" with "people, ideas, and things" (p.xxii) we need need to realize that it will take time and that Romer's paper is just the start of the movement towards acceptance of the new.
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A for Basil, although next time I'd probably knock this down to a B for poor editing.
ReplyDeleteSo, what Romer ends up doing is replacing an old model with a new one. Everyone tries to do that, but few succeed.
This is similar to the discussion from class on Wednesday about how the legacy media, bureaucrats and politicians are wedded to the idea that trade in goods and services is critically important. That's a model that is going away, but the physical turnover is faster and the intellectual turnover is slower in these fields than in academics.