|Peter Boettke|

In Thomas Kuhn's essay "The Essential Tension" he argues that original contributions in science result from a delicate balancing act between irreverence and obedience to tradition. Only someone deeply embedded in the existing scientific mainstream can gain the scientific credibility to shift scientific opinion.

Many readers of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions often misinterpreted the notion of paradigm shift, and believed that paradigmatic shifts in science could come from anywhere. But Kuhn's history is different. Lone wolfs barking in the back woods don't pull off scientific revolutions. Instead, it is from within the group of outsiders, those who have the greatest claim to insider status that pull off the revolution in thought. Irreverence from those of accomplishment within the recognized scientific community works, irreverence from outsiders who are outside the recognized scientific community doesn't.

Gordon Tullock is among the most irreverent leading scholar I've ever met. Kenneth Boulding was jokingly irreverent. Israel Kirzner, on the other hand, is decidedly not irreverent -- in fact, that is probably the last word anyone would choose to associate with him. But Jim Buchanan, while never as outlandish as Tullock, and impish as Boulding, does possess a strong irreverent streak with respect to mid-20th century mainstream economics. "What more," Buchanan often asked us, "do we know about market processes today than what Adam Smith knew in 1776?" And, he added, "if we cannot answer that question easily, then perhaps the 'emperor has no clothes'." Consider the following example of Buchanan's irreverence from What Should Economists Do?:

If not an economist, what am I? An outdated freak whose functional role in the general scheme of things has passed into history? Perhaps I should accept such an assessment, retire gracefully, and, with alcoholic breath, hoe my cabbages. Perhaps I could do so if the modern technicians had indeed produced "better" economic mousetraps. Instead of evidence of progress, however, I see a continuing erosion of the intellectual (and social) capital that was accumulated by "political economy" in its finest hours.

In my essay "James M. Buchanan and the Rebirth of Political Economy" I explain how Buchanan's paradigmatic revolution of public choice fit the Kuhnian story of the "essential tension". As his student, this tension between a deep commitment to the teachings of the discipline of economics and political economy tracing back to Adam Smith and as developed by classical and neoclassical economics, and a harsh criticism of the currently fashionable Neo-Keynesian synthesis and the hyper-formalism of equilibrium always economics was evident in every lecture. Would-be social engineers and modern technicians did not advance the teachings of political economy that was developed by scholars from Adam Smith to Frank Knight.

The Emperor (in this case the eastern establishment economists) had no clothes. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, James Buchanan has reiterated this theme against modern versions of Keynesianism and the hyper-formalized models of economic behavior which cannot explain current affairs. Buchanan's essay "Economists Have No Clothes" challenges scientific and policy legitimacy of the current orthodoxy, and argues instead for a "constitutional perspective" on the crisis and post-crisis political economy.

Hat-tip: Tyler Cowen