ECONOMICS IN DISARRAY: “THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY“
The current global crisis, started perhaps in 2007/2008, has put economists and economics in a very difficult position. Even if John Kays believes that the reputation of both economists and economics ”...was never high...“, this is not a real and sincere assumption. A broad majority of economists generally behave as if economics was a powerful and exact science capable of making all kind of accurate predictions. It is a "cultural" problem: economists really believe they are "scientists". When in fact, they are the most sophisticated “shamans“ of modern societies.
When the crisis arrives and Queen Elizabeth, as well as Ms. Smith, asks “Why don’t you tell me the truth?,” economists like Robert Lucas discover that “economics predicts that crisis are not predictable“ and John Kays decides to remember what he learned in during his secondary studies of philosophy: ”the Map is not the Territory”.
The title of John Kay’s article, is the result of delicious ingenuity, intellectual innocence or, hypocrisy. From Plato (who absolutely preferred the Map and neglected the Territory), to Jacques Lacan (who explains that the Territory (The Real) is unreachable and just an excuse to build the Map (putting the Symbolic and the Imaginary at work together), and Immanuel Kant, who understood very quickly that the Territory was understandable only if we build a Map accordingly to our own and internal categories, everybody knows that the Map is not the Territory.
The title of John Kay’s article, is the result of delicious ingenuity, intellectual innocence or, hypocrisy. From Plato (who absolutely preferred the Map and neglected the Territory), to Jacques Lacan (who explains that the Territory (The Real) is unreachable and just an excuse to build the Map (putting the Symbolic and the Imaginary at work together), and Immanuel Kant, who understood very quickly that the Territory was understandable only if we build a Map accordingly to our own and internal categories, everybody knows that the Map is not the Territory.
All this is obvious for a young student of philosophy but economists have to go through the process of rediscovering this evidence every time a new crisis breaks. But in times of prosperity, between one crisis and another, they always act as "the Masters of the Territory".
http://ineteconomics.org/blog/inet/john-kay-map-not-territory-essay-state-economics