{"id":4806,"date":"2011-12-09T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=4806"},"modified":"2011-12-09T10:31:57","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T15:31:57","slug":"chronocentrism-in-the-social-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/4806","title":{"rendered":"Chronocentrism in the Social Sciences"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, I discussed the dangers of chronocentrism<\/a>, which has been defined by British science journalist\u00a0Tom Standage<\/a>\u00a0as “the egotism that one’s own generation is poised on the very cusp of history.” I wrote:<\/p>\n

From Fukuyama’s\u00a0The End of History and the Last Man<\/a><\/em>\u00a0— “History is directional, and its endpoint is capitalist liberal democracy” — to Rifkin’s\u00a0The End of Work<\/a><\/em>\u00a0— “We are entering a new phase in history, one characterized by the steady and inevitable decline of jobs”\u00a0—\u00a0to\u00a0Millenarians<\/a>, present-biasedness and the belief that the old rules no longer apply seem insuperable for many people.<\/p>\n

Nowhere was this clearer than when the world’s population hit\u00a0seven billion<\/a>\u00a0a few weeks ago.\u00a0Never mind\u00a0the past 25 million years of human evolution, during which humans always managed to develop technologies to feed themselves. Never mind the fact that famines are man-made and not directly caused by a lack of food to go around. Never mind all that: many commentators saw fit to inform us that the old rules no longer applied, and that we were about to enter an era of starvation and famine.<\/p>\n

Chronocentrism in the Social Sciences<\/h3>\n

Chronocentrism is\u00a0particularly\u00a0pernicious in the social sciences in general and in economics in particular.<\/p>\n

Indeed, for many, it seems difficult to take a long view of the history of economic thought and admit that, much as we chuckle at some of the research “findings” of a few hundred years ago (Malthus is a particularly good example), researchers 50 years from now will find plenty to criticize about our own work — if they read it at all. Yet how many times do we seem willing to fight tooth and nail to defend research findings?<\/p>\n

I get the impression that in the natural sciences, researchers are more aware of this particular manifestation of present-biasedness. In the natural sciences, the understanding that no paper is perfect appears widespread, and researchers seem conscious that their work can be improved.<\/p>\n

Perhaps as a result, researchers in the natural sciences\u00a0cite each other’s work a lot more<\/a>\u00a0than economists and other social scientists do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, I discussed the dangers of chronocentrism, which has been defined by British science journalist\u00a0Tom Standage\u00a0as “the egotism that one’s own generation…<\/p>\n

Continue readingChronocentrism in the Social Sciences<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,55,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-economics","category-social-sciences","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-1fw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4806"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4913,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions\/4913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}