Epilogue

Summary

Lo duca e io per quel cammino ascoso

intrammo a ritornar nel chiaro mondo;

e sanza cura d'alcun riposo,

salimmo su, el primo e io secondo,

tanto ch'i vidi de le cose belle

che porta 'l ciel, per un pertugio tondo.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

(My guide [Virgil] and I started our journey back to the world of light through that hidden tunnel; and caring not for rest, we climbed up, he first and I second, until I saw up above, through the round opening, those beautiful things that the sky holds [stars]. And then we emerged to see the stars again.)

Dante (Inferno, Canto XXXIV)

Modernism promises knowledge free from doubt, free from metaphysics, morals, and personal conviction. What it is able to deliver renames as scientific methodology the scientist's and especially the economic scientist's metaphysics, morals, and personal convictions. It cannot deliver what it promises.

McCloskey (1985, p. 16)

We usually take the side of the underdog [but] there is no position from which sociological research can be done that is not biased in one or another way.… We can never avoid taking sides. So we are left with the question of whether taking sides means that some distortion is introduced into our work so great as to make it useless. … Our problem is to make sure that, whatever point of view we take, our research meets the standards of good scientific work, that our unavoidable sympathies do not render our results invalid.… Whatever side we are on, we must use our techniques impartially enough that a belief to which we are especially sympathetic could be proved untrue. […]