Why Economics was Late? If indeed it was late?

A while ago Tyler Cowen asked

'the absence of a developed economics until the mid-18th century remains a startling anomaly in the history of ideas.  Why was that?'

One answer provided by Arnold Kling is that people really began to be accustomed to market economic activity only in the time of Adam Smith. Kling interprets this to support his hypothesis that market economies did not exist before the 18th century - an idea criticized in previous posts.  But there is no reason to accept this hypothesis.  Nor is it clear that economics really developed 'late'.

Karl Marx had a linear view of the history thought. Ideas are the product of the means of production. Economics only appears in the 18th century because economists are the running dogs of the capitalists etc. 

I don't know whether or not Arnold shares this view. But I think his argument contains the same mistake. He observes that

'the fact that there was no Greek or Roman Adam Smith is consistent with my view that the Greeks and the Romans did not really have modern market economies.'

Kling does not specify whether a market economy is merely necessary or in fact sufficient for the emergence of economics.  I agree that  with the first claim but disagree with the second claim. It may be necessary but is certainly not sufficient otherwise every societies with market economies would have developed some form of economic science.

My explanation for the 'lateness' of economics is as follows.

Economics requires more than one thing. It does not just require the existence of markets and market economies. It is also based upon a enlightenment view of science and of society. As one commentator on the MR post notes, physics only began in the 17th century.  Gravity existed before Newton but medieval thinkers had not found it a subject particularly worthy of their interest.

Economics in particular pre-supposes certain views about mankind; views that can be called enlightenment views.  Ancient Greek thinkers were concerned with the fate of polis. They touched on some economic themes but were more interested in how virtue could be inculcated and in how one city state might defeat another in war. Scholastic thinkers were interested in how society could better serve the church. Machiavelli and Rousseau both believed that a statesmen should strive to prevent his subjects from becoming rich.  An interest in economics pre-supposes an interest in the general material welfare of mankind. Every economists cares about efficiency but it is not clear that this is a universal human trait. Economics is also closely linked to the supposition that individuals know their own preferences best.  This is a liberal enlightenment view that only emerges as a result over the wars of religion.

From this historical point of view, it is not at all surprisingly that the only economic thought that existed in the medieval period was written by scholastics who were interested in commerce only from the perspective of natural law.

In fact a consideration of the works of scholastics like Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, William of Auxerre, and Giles of Lessines (see this book for example) refutes Kling's claims about the absence of a market economy before 1750. It shows that they were concerned with delineating the bounds of licit and illicit economic conduct in a market economy.  There writings make no sense outside of the context of a market economy.

But they did not develop economic theory. Unsurprisingly, as Joseph Schumpeter and Raymond de Roover demonstrated, they came up with some original economic concepts but they did so almost by accident.  They were not economists. They studied market exchange but from the point of view of canon law, not from the perspective we call economics.

This required an enlightenment.  The same is true in many other areas of thought. All of the social sciences post-date the enlightenment. Only history, theology, philosophy and literature really date back to the beginning of history. The ancient Greeks do some physics and mathematics. The Arabs and Indians do mathematics and crude medicine. But many academic subjects and many sciences are ignored or neglected. I would argue that social science only became possible and also interesting in the wake of the first enlightenment in the 17th century.

Comments

[Emil]

"there was no Greek or Roman Adam Smith" ... how could we know ? 20 mil. quite literate people (if the profane scribblings on walls of Pompeii are any proof) and nooone got an interest in how or why prices change and why some get rich and others don't ? Or maybe the Middle Ages monks were not interested in talking about base things and did not copy the manuscripts ? After all, they did not copy a lot of books that we do know about from summaries, excerpts or refutations.

Arnold Kling seemingly believes that what he knows about a subject is everything there is to know about that subject. He should go to the mythical "good nearby library" and check out the glass beads circulation in the bronze age (hint: linking Egypt with remote places such as Ireland, for example), or the circulation of rough pottery in the Roman empire.

"All of the social sciences post-date the enlightenment." -- this is a bit of circular thinking ... Enlightenment is the moment whatever we call now "science" began to be defined as such, so there could be no "science" before there was a concept for "science".

"Only history, theology, philosophy and literature really date back to the beginning of history." -- well, what we call now "history" was either part of the literary genre, or of the study of law.

"I would argue that social science only became possible and also interesting in the wake of the first enlightenment in the 17th century." -- as far as the "social science" is concerned, how about Polybius ? "History" is only a method: there are History departments in contemporary universities only because the state needs propagandists to teach the Mouldavians why should they fight the Borogravians ...