Two weeks ago I took part in an...

Two weeks ago I took part in an interdisciplinary workshop in Galway (Ireland), which gathered researchers from physics, mathematics and psychology and was hosted by this great researcher, who managed to bring together a bunch of open-minded and interesting people. While most colleagues presented some recent papers, I decided to go for a more “big-picture” approach explaining, basically, what I think that heterodox economics and pluralism is all about (slides here). In retrospect, this proved to be a really fine choice as I had the impression that such an occasional “big picture”-talk not primarily pressing for an immediate contribution adds a lot to facilitate sensible discussion and common understanding across disciplinary boundaries.

Experiences like these, which show that openness across boundaries is not only possible (contra Kuhn!), but also fruitful, serve as a nice counterpoint to the usual observations of disciplinary closure visible in economics, which is today taken for granted by most observers to the discipline (see some past editorials, or maybe better, these nice remarks over at orgtheory).

Personally, I would like to draw on these experiences in the near future as I am switching departments: after a decade of work in philosophy, I will change over to the Department of Economics at Johannes Kepler University Linz as of April 1, 2017. Hence, my versatility will be tested; in philosophy I started as an “economist, who accidentally became a philosopher”. Now, I will turn to being “a philosopher, who has accidentally become an economist”. I hope sincerely, the transition will be as smooth as it sounds ;-)

All the Best,

Jakob