Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:53:23.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Age and the Acceptance of Cliometrics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Arthur M. Diamond Jr.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Popular wisdom asserts, and life-cycle theories of human capital investment seem to imply, that older scientists are slower to accept new theories than are younger scientists. When this view is tested with evidence on the acceptance of cliometrics, however, the year-of-birth variable, although statistically significant, explains less than 10 percent of the variance in acceptance.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 838 - 841
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Samuelson, Paul, “The General Theory,” in Stiglitz, Joseph, ed., The Collected Papers of Paul A. Samuleson, Vol. II (Cambridge, MA, 1966), pp. 1517–18.Google Scholar

2 Planck, Max, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (New York, 1949), pp. 33–34Google Scholar. In a less-cited passage, Planck gives a slightly different formulation to his principle: “An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with youth” (The Philosophy of Physics [New York, 1936], p. 97Google Scholar).

3 Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962), p. 151Google Scholar; idem, “The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science,” in Harry Woolf, ed., Quantification (Indianapolis, 1961), p. 348; Barber, Bernard, “Resistance by Scientists to Scientific Discovery,” rpt. in Barber, Bernard and Hirsch, Walter, eds., The Sociology of Science (New York, 1963), pp. 542–43Google Scholar; Wisdom, J. O., “The Nature of Normal Science,” in Schilpp, Paul Arthur, ed., The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Vol. 2 (LaSalle, IL, 1974), p. 829Google Scholar; Merton, Robert K. and Zuckerman, Harriet, “Age, Aging and Age Structure in Science,” rpt. in Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science (New York, 1969), pp. 57–58Google Scholar; Greenberg, Daniel S., The Politics of Pure Science (New York, 1967), p. 45Google Scholar; and Holton, Gerald, “The Duality and Growth of Physical Science,” in Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1973), p. 394Google Scholar. The principle is also quoted and given a qualified endorsement in: Stephen G. Brush, The Kind of Motion We Call Heat, Book 1 in Montroll, E. W. and Lebowitz, J. L., eds., Studies in Statistical Mechanics, Vol. 6 (New York, 1976), p. 640Google Scholar; Hagstrom, Warren O., The Scientific Community (New York, 1965), pp. 283 and 291Google Scholar; SirBondi, Hermann, “What Is Progress in Science?” in Harre, Rom, ed., Problems of Scientific Revolution (Oxford, 1975), p. 7Google Scholar; and Cantor, G. N., “The Edinburgh Phrenology Debate: 1803–1828,” Annals of Science, 32 (1975), 196Google Scholar. The principle is mentioned non-commitally in Rosenkrantz, Roger D., Inference, Method and Decision (Dordrecht, Holland, 1977)Google Scholar; and Stegmuller, Wolfgang, The Structure and Dynamics of Theories (New York, 1976), p. 148Google Scholar. The principle is referred to disapprovingly in: Feyerabend, Paul, “Consolations for the Specialist,” in Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (London, 1970), p. 203Google Scholar; and Scheffler, Israel, Science and Subjectivity (Indianapolis, 1967), pp. 18–19Google Scholar. Most recently, the principle has received an oblique but approving mention in: Coats, A. W., “The Historical Context of the ‘New’ Economic History,” The Journal of European Economic History, 9 (Spring 1980), 190–92.Google Scholar

4 Diamond, Arthur Mansfield, “Science as a Rational Enterprise” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1978).Google Scholar

5 Brush, The Kind of Motion, p. 94.

6 Hagstrom, Scientific Community, p. 291.

7 Blackmore, John T., “Is Planck's ‘Principle’ True?” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 29 (1978), 347–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Our paper appeared in Science, 202 (Nov. 17, 1978), 717–23. In an unpublished, econometrically sophisticated examination of the acceptance of the wage-push theory of inflation, David Levy of the National Planning Association reports results that disconfirm Planck's Principle (“What Was Classical Monetary Theory?” [mimeo. draft, Feb. 19, 1980], pp. 30–32). I attempted another test by using marginal utility theory, drawing my sample from a list of acceptors of marginal utility compiled by Stigler, George, “The Adoption of the Marginal Utility Theory” (in The Marginal Revolution in Economics, ed. Black, R. D. Collison, et al. [Durham, NC, 1973], p. 312)Google Scholar. The test was of questionable value, however, because of difficulty in pinpointing the year of acceptance, small sample size, and an inappropriate age range (from 4 to 34) for acceptors at the time of the invention of marginal utility (1871). See Diamond, “Science as a Rational Enterprise,” pp. 124–29.

9 The pseudo coefficient of determination is the logit equivalent of the ordinary-least-squares coefficient of determination (R-square). The method for calculating the pseudo R2 used here is described in Goodman, Leo A., “A Modified Multiple Regression Approach to the Analysis of Dichotomous Variables,” American Sociological Review, 37 (Feb. 1972), 42–44Google Scholar; and McCutcheon, Allan L., “The Centrality of Corporate and Competitive Class Identification” (M.A. thesis, Univ. of Chicago, 1977), pp. 36–38.Google Scholar

10 See e.g., Leijonhufvud, Axel, On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes (London, 1968)Google Scholar, and Robinson, Joan, “What Has Become of the Keynesian Revolution?” in Keynes, Milo, ed., Essays on John Maynard Keynes (London, 1975), pp. 123–31.Google Scholar

11 Cameron, Rondo and Galambos, Louis, eds., Handbook of the Economic History Association and Directory of Members, 1977, special issue of this Journal, 37 (Summer 1977).Google Scholar

12 McCloskey, Donald N., “The Achievements of the Cliometric School,” this Journal, 38 (March 1978), 15.Google Scholar

13 There was no special reason for stopping with the 117th person. A list of the sample, including birth year, Ph.D. year, and classification as cliometrician or non-cliometrician, is available upon request from the author.