"[A]n economical author requires from his reader much goodwill as well as word as well as a large stair out of co-operation ... In economics y'all cannot convict your opponent of error; y'all tin only convince him of it."Happy New Year. And thank y'all to all the regular, semi-regular, occasional, as well as one-time readers for your goodwill, intelligence, cooperation--and for taking a await at this weblog at 1 time as well as then.
The quotation from Keynes appears inward book XIII of the Collected Works of John Maynard Keynes, edited past times Donald Moggridge as well as published inward 1973 (pp. 469-471). Here's a fuller quotation from the passage, both worth reading for itself, as well as besides to give about context:
When nosotros write economic theory, nosotros write inward a quasi-formal style; as well as at that spot tin endure no doubt, inward spite of the disadvantages, that this is our best available agency of conveying our thoughts to 1 another. But when an economist writes inward a quasi-formal style, he is composing neither a document verbally consummate as well as exact so every bit to endure capable of a strict legal interpretation, nor a logically consummate proof. Whilst it is his duty to brand his premises as well as his exercise of damage every bit clear every bit he can, he never states all his premises as well as his definitions are non perfectly clear-cut. He never mentions all the qualifications necessary to his conclusions. He has no agency of stating, 1 time as well as for all, the precise score of abstraction on which he is moving, as well as he does non motion on the same score all the time. It is, I think, of the essential nature of economical exposition that it gives, non a consummate statement, which, fifty-fifty if it were possible, would endure prolix as well as complicated to the dot of obscurity but a sample statement, so to speak, out of all the things which could endure said, intended to propose to the reader the whole parcel of associated ideas, so that, if he catches the bundle, he volition non inward the to the lowest degree endure confused or impeded past times the technical incompleteness of the mere words which the author has written down, taken past times themselves.
This means, on the 1 hand, that an economical author requires from his reader much goodwill as well as word as well as a large stair out of co-operation; and, on the other hand, that at that spot are a chiliad futile, yet verbally legitimate, objections which an objector tin raise. In economics y'all cannot convict your opponent of error; y'all tin exclusively convince him of it. And, fifty-fifty if y'all are right, y'all cannot convince him, if at that spot is a defect inward your ain powers of sentiment as well as exposition or if his caput is already so filled amongst opposite notions that he cannot select deal of the clues to your thought which are trying to throw to him.
The results is that much criticism, which has verbal justification inward what the author has written, is however altogether futile as well as maddeningly irritating; for it simply indicates that the minds of authors as well as reader take away maintain failed to meet. ....
I enquire forgiveness, therefore, if I take away maintain failed inward the necessary goodwill as well as intellectual sympathy when I criticise; as well as to those minds to which, for whatsoever reasons, my ideas produce non discovery an tardily entry, I offering the assurance inward advance that they volition non discovery it difficult, where the province to endure traversed is so extensive as well as complicated, to discovery reasons which volition seem to them adequate, for refusing to follow. Time rather than disceptation ... volition kind out the truthful from the false.
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