Historical Small Events and the Eclipse of Utopia: Perspectives on Path Dependence in Human Thought

Abstract

Questions such as ‘What if such small companies as Hewletts and the Varians had not been established in Santa Clara County in California?’ or ‘What if Q‐type keyboards had not been invented?’ are well known among economists. The questions point at a phenomenon called path dependence: ‘small events’, the argument goes, may cause the evolution of institutions to lock in to specific paths that may produce undesirable consequences. How about applying such skeptical views in economics to human ideas and thought in general? That is to say, what if we ask such questions as: what if Greek philosophy had not been interested in ‘essences’ and ‘foundations’? What if Kant had not invented the ‘thing‐in‐itself?’ Nature and society, according to such Platonic philosophers, can be known only if it can be shown that events are governed, regulated and characterised by ‘forms’, which are immutable, complete, and perfect in their nature. But is there an ‘essence’ that makes a man 100 per cent male? Was there really a ‘foundation’ in history that caused a proletarian revolution in Russia? What if we had pushed aside the rhetoric of utopian ideality? What if we had a worldview different than the one depicted by Thomas More in his Utopia? The essay points at the possibility of such skepticism in human ideas and thought.

Acknowledgements

This paper was mainly written while I was a visiting scholar at the economics department of the University of Illinois at Chicago in February and March 2005. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the ‘Economics and Utopia’ Tenth Annual European Conference on the History of Economics, Vienna 7–9 April 2005. I would like to thank the conference participants for their encouragement and contribution. I am also thankful to colleagues at Ankara University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the University of Illinois at Chicago – especially Deirdre McCloskey – and Jack Vromen, Albert Jolink, Frans Schaeffer, Ilker Birbil, and Chris Borst, who read earlier versions of the text, and generously provided numerous useful comments and remarks. Two anonymous referees helped me see the shortcomings of the paper. I would like to thank them, too, for their critical and constructive perspective.

Notes

¹ See also Spulber (2001: 90–109).

² Compare, for instance, the metaphor of path dependence with Arjo Klamer’s metaphor of ‘conversations’ in his forthcoming book, Speaking of Economists ( 2006 ). Path dependence asserts that breaking free from the past course of events may be impossible. Klamer, in a similar fashion, but from a different point of view, rightly argues that getting out of the course of the events (that is, ‘conversations’) can be difficult, but getting into it (it being ‘conversations’) can also be as tricky, and even impossible.

³ For ‘Polya‐urn processes’ in economics, see Arthur (1985) and Arthur et al. (1987).

⁴ For further argumentation, see also McCloskey (1997).

⁵ See, for instance, Harrison (1995: 56–60) and Cooter and Ulen (1995: 79–84).

⁶ Despite Rorty’s elegance in writing philosophy, his attack on ‘realism’ and ‘analytic philosophy’ is nevertheless far from being uncontroversial. His ‘edifying philosophy’, to many philosophers, begs a certain number of questions, and has therefore been heavily criticised (see, for instance, Dworkin 1996). While I take for granted the flows in his broad‐brush treatment of analytic philosophy, I, for the present paper, find attractive and relevant Rorty’s views of ‘irony’ and ‘solidarity’ as well as his critique of ‘objective truth’ and ‘foundationalism’. Rorty, according to my view, is among the group of contemporary thinkers who, in a ‘post‐Nietzschean’ fashion, have succeeded in drawing the intellectuals’ attention, especially in epistemology, with an accessible language, to the virtues of pragmatist thinking. His writings, I think, have re‐granted the prestige of such philosophers as John Dewey and William James, whose works are now more influential in scientific and philosophical inquiry.

⁷ For a reassessment of Thomas More as a public and private figure see, for instance, Guy (2000).

⁸ For a detailed account of the attempts in modern philosophy that have been dedicated to unearthing the essentials of nature, see John Dewey (1960), especially the third chapter, ‘Conflict of Authorities’.

⁹ For further argumentation, see McKenna (2001).