Energy and Economic Myths

Abstract

There is an appreciable grain of truth in one of Percy Bridgman's remarks that the profession is the most opportunistic of all. Indeed, economists' attention has continually shifted from one problem to another, the problems often being not even closely related. Search all periodicals of the English-speaking world before 1950, for example, and you will hardly find any mention of economic development. It is curious, therefore, that economists have over the last hundred years remained stubbornly attached to one particular idea, the mechanistic epistemology which dominated the orientation of the founders of the Neoclassical