Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities by Gary Saul Morson

Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities Reviews

• 
  Santi

  This is yet another attack on Economics which repeats the typical mistakes in this sub-literature:
  
  1) To depict Economics as essentially mathematical, despite less than 30% of research articles these days use mathematical models
  2) To treat Economics as a predictive science whilst forecasting is a small and not particularly highly regarded branch of Economics.
  
  There is also one very lengthy chapter about universities admissions which is meant to be a damming critique of economics when in fact has absolutely nothing to do with the discipline.
  
  That said, the book has some interesting ideas on how literature (but, mind you, a very particular type of literature: the realist psychological novels of XIX century authors) can enrich economics. This is the most convincing and compelling argument of the book. But hardly one that justifies 320 pages! Privileges from one of the authors being President of Northewestern University, I guess.
• 
  Gabie

  It's nice to know that my liberal arts degree and my time spent studying literature is not all for naught.
  
  Cents & Sensibility talks about how culture informs the performance and actions of society which eventually dictate the market. Also, the book mentions the need for abstract thinking to come up with the questions that have to be answered in tech, economics, science.
  
  Seriously recommend this read.
• 
  Carl Printer

  An interesting read for sure. I’m always up for any argument that calls for a balanced, non-dogmatic approaches. Whether development economics or domestic policy, I think it critical those in power be able to call on a holistic—that’s to say multifaceted—understanding of any given issue, and that we hold leaders to this higher standard. An example the authors use early in the book articulates the point perfectly: When assessing the success of development/aid programs, a purely economical approach would determine a return on investment based on some formulation of lives saved and how much in today’s dollars those lives will earn. Given that metric of success, programs that help the poorest places, arguably where they’re needed the most, wouldn’t appear to generate as much return as a less-expensive program in a relatively better off place. On that inherently awful scale, someone thinking purely economically has implicitly made a decision that the poor are valued less. The same choice is made in security decisions: Is it worth saving a poor life from genocide, climate crisis refugees, etc.?
  
  I’m not claiming the decisions are easy, but I want more people at all levels thinking about what it would mean to have the greed and hubris of our society tempered by an understanding of culture, of psychological impact, of duty to society, all of which are lessons and ideals that are thoroughly discussed, debated, highlighted, and refined by the very best works in the humanities.
• 
  Rachel

  Some of my favorite quotes:
  
  p293 "Two cultures; a common aim. To build a world in which we not only draw upon economics, medicine, engineering, and science in order to lead longer, healthier, and more prosperous lives, but also never forget that it is the humanities and the arts that make those lives worth living. Let's supplement the quantitative rigor, the focus on policy, and the logic of economics with the empathy, judgment, and wisdom that defines humanities at their best."
  
  p292 "There is no place where the complexity of ethical questions is appreciated more than the great novels.."
  
  p292 "To be sure, humanists have a lot to learn from economists as well. When resources are limited, the efficient use of them is itself a moral as well as an economic issue. We need to recognize that choices entail costs as well as benefits. We need to be more wary than humanists often are of counterexamples and confirmation bias."
  
  p291 "So let us summarize a few ways economists can learn from the study of literature. A serious engagement with great writers includes living into their perspectives and the perspectives of their characters. One comes to sense from within what it is like to feel like someone else and to think like someone else. We overcome our natural tendencies to presume that everyone is like us or that, if they are not they are benighted. In many ways, literature liberates us from the prison houses of self, of our culture, and of our historic period. Literature thereby teaches us to be humble about our own knowledge. When it comes to human beings, things are always likely to be much more complex then they seem. In the hard sciences, Galileo was right to imagine that most times real simplicity lies behind apparent complexity, but with human beings, apparent simplicity usually conceals underlying complexity."
  
  p241 "In short, the humanities, if humanists will only believe in them, have a crucial role to play in education. They have access to truths about human beings other disciplines have not attained. And while other disciplines may recommend empathy, the humanities entail actual practice of it. Their cultivation of diverse points of view offers a model for neighboring disciplines, and for liberal arts education generally, to follow...The humanities allow us to escape that island and return to it enriched with the wisdom of elsewhere."
  
  p279 "Some supposed irrationalities, in short, prove quite rational when one considers that attention is itself a resource in short supply...Indeed, it is readily handled by a mainstream economic model that accepts attention, like time, as a limited resource."
  
  p277 "A humanist is also struck by how often she is moved to say in response to some discovery, "you mean, you had to prove that?"
  
  p255 The narrator of Tolstoy's story "Lucerne" observes: 'What an unfortunate, pitiful creature is man, with his desire for positive decisions, thrown into this ever moving, limitless ocean of good and evil, of facts, conceptions, and contradiction!...Men have made subdivisions for themselves in this eternally moving, unending, intermingled chaos of good and evil: they have traced imaginary lines on that ocean, and expect the ocean to divide itself accordingly.'"
• 
  Riley Richards

  I loved the incorporation of literature, specifically realist works, and the way it can influence economics. As an economics graduate student, this book has encouraged me to improve my research by including narrative explanations in combination with mathematical models and by consulting literature for guidance when dealing with ethical issues.
  
  
  
• 
  Graeme Roberts

  Academic onanism.
• 
  Taylor Lee

  At times inspiring, occasionally thought provoking, but more frequently of specific interest to certain academic and policy-making specialists.
• 
  Karl-O

  
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...