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A Companion to the History of Economic Thought - Chapter 38

C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - E I G H T The History of Ideas and Economics Ideas are intellectualized concepts. Some seem so attractive that they are benchmarks, or “authority-statements.” Different authority-statements develop, intermingle, and mature into comprehensive “authority-systems". | CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT The History of Ideas and Economics Mark Perlman 38.1 Introduction Ideas are intellectualized concepts. Some seem so attractive that they are benchmarks or authority-statements. Different authority-statements develop intermingle and mature into comprehensive authority-systems. Several have thoroughly revolutionized physics and chemistry. The task for anyone using a single authority-system is easy the economists world is full of conflicting authority-statements with each school of economic thought embracing multiple frequently contradictory authority-statements. For economists there are three types of authority-systems Faith Science and public policy. 38.2 Ideas Emanating from Thirteenth-Century Roman Catholicism Modern secularists consider religious Faith as superstition albeit a potent authority-system. For some religions Faith is sufficient for others it is a necessity and for still others those based on ethical conventions Faith is irrelevant. Nonetheless all schools of economic thought draw on authority-systems that are derived originally from religious Faith or from a system that was once intertwined with religious Faith. 38.2.1 The background Until early in the thirteenth century the long-established dominant Roman Catholic theological authority-system was anchored to St. Augustine s belief that The History of Ideas and Economics 635 Absolute Truth i.e. the Eucharist was necessarily an abstraction that is beyond sensory perceptions. That belief stemmed from Neo-Platonism a third-century Hellenic philosophy that melded ideas from pre-Socratic schools Plato Aristotelian metaphysics and Stoicism with an oriental theory of emanation. Neo-Platonism rejected mathematics as a form of Absolute Truth. 38.2.2 Scholasticism Aristotle rediscovered By 1240 two Dominicans Albertus Magnus 1200-80 and Thomas Aquinas 122574 were teaching in the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris. Departing from Augustinian orthodoxy the two contended that .