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The Romantic Economist, book review continued from page 10.The very fact that he is treating the Romantics as practicalguides to solving real-world problems will startle those readerswho are used to thinking of Romanticism as defined by an otherworldlyrejection of commercial enterprises in favor of nature andprivate, individual experience. Though Wordsworth famouslystated “the world is too much with us late and soon/getting andspending we lay waste our powers,” he and his contemporariesremained fully engaged in that world and tried hard to influencedebates over the accelerating pace of industrialization.Bronk acknowledges that the eclectic group of thinkers hedraws on, among them Wordsworth, Burke, Coleridge, Keats,and Hazlitt in England and Herder and Kant in Germany, neverthought of themselves as forming a movement; nevertheless, asBronk shows, together their ideas constitute a coherent critique.One of the great strengths of the book is his ability to explain avariety of Romantic positions without distorting or oversimplifyingthem, with due consideration of their original context as wellas their current usefulness. Though he doesn’t mention Goethe,the book should be of particular interest to those engaged in recoveringGoethe’s science, since the ideas explored by Bronk areexactly those that make Goethe also so contemporary.The aspects of Romanticism Bronk explores most fully are,first, the Romantics’ commitment to an accessible style. Bronkstresses Wordsworth’s desire to write in the language “reallyspoken by men” as a guide to how economics should alsoproceed. He quotes the economist Alfred Marshall who argued,following the Romantics, that mathematics should be used sparinglyand side by side with other ways of explaining methodsand policies.L I L I P O H Magazine’s Lastest Special Issue:Living with CancerPerspectives in the Pursuit of HealthInside this 54 page Issue:• Mistletoe Uses and Anthroposophic Remedies• Information on Acupuncture and Therapeutic Touch• Lymphatic, Metabolic and Therapeutic Eurythmy Articles• Personal Stories, And Much More$5 each, or receive discountedbulk rates when you order 10 ormore copies. Available to orderthrough www.lilipoh.com or bycalling 610-917-0792.Makes a meaningful gift.L I L I p o ht h e s p i r i t i n l i f eSPECIAL EDITION:$5.00LIVING with CANCERp e r s p e c t i v e s i n t h e p u r s u i t o f h e a l t hIntegrative TherapiesNourishing the SoulEmbracing the SpiritSecond, in addition to the Romantics’ democratic attitudetoward language, Bronk thinks we have much to learn from theirhyper-awareness of the role language, particularly metaphor,plays in shaping our sense of reality. They were critical of theEnlightenment’s reliance on the language of physics as thefoundation for understanding processes in nature and society.They argued that organic rather than mechanical metaphorscome much closer to capturing how societies actually functionand effectively remove the false expectation of equilibrium fromeconomics.Perhaps even more important than their recommendations ofparticular kinds of metaphors is their insistence on the constitutivenature of figurative language in general and the necessityof experimenting with different kinds of metaphors to cultivatemultiple perspectives on particular issues.That we “half-create” what we see and describe in languageleads the Romantics to a pluralism that is Bronk’s third area offocus. The Romantics were convinced that there are no universalanswers to the ethical or practical problems of life andthat, therefore, no one method of proceeding or one theorycan purport to explain all situations. They were interested inparticulars, in the local, in the uniqueness of circumstancesrather than in the ways they might fit into a theory. Herder,for example, argued that each country or region develops in aunique way depending on its particular history and language.The economics of a country should emerge organically out ofits culture rather than be imposed from without, as was (say)the Washington plan implemented in Eastern Europe after thefall of the Soviet Union. While different cultures or nations maydevelop incommensurable visions, those visions would not, tothe Romantic mind, be therefore unintelligible. To Bronk, thisinsistence on pluralism provides an important corrective to thetendency in modern politics and economics to assume that onesize fits all, and that if an idea works in one place, it will workeverywhere.Bronk uses Keats’s famous exploration of “negative capability”as a model for developing the capacity to live in uncertainty“without irritably grasping after fact and reason.” That opennessmeans not assuming that the answer will come from thepast. Instead, it leaves a space for the imagination to begin tocreate a new vision.In keeping with this pluralism and this awareness of language’sconstitutive role, economists, according to Bronk, should borrowmetaphors from other disciplines as often as they can in order tosee how other ways of looking at the world enlarge and complementtheir own. Even if various discourses remain to an extentincommensurable and don’t add up to a full and seamless pictureof the world, this practice of comparison will help keep thelanguages of different disciplines in dialogue with one another,without the expectation of any grand synthesis.These various Romantic correctives to theorizing in isolationlead Bronk to argue that we should have a broader notionof what we hope to gain from knowledge. The truth of a theoryshould not lie in its predictive value alone. Meteorology, forexample, offers a good analogy for economists: while we can’tpredict the weather very far into the future, we can neverthelesslearn a tremendous amount by studying weather patterns.One of the most radical aspects of the book is the degree towhich it asks economists to scale back what they can with confidencepredict.50 Evolving News for Members & Friends