![]() ![]() They succeeded in their attempt to save the appearances. Thus the Jesuits created much more complicated models than the elegant heresy of Copernicus, in which the earth revolved around the sun. The Jesuit astronomers of 17th-century Rome wanted above all to maintain the assumption that the sun revolved around the earth-for if it did not then the Bible’s declaration that Joshua called on God to make the sun stand still in the sky was a lie, and a Bible that lies even once cannot be the inerrant foundation of faith. ![]() Posner’s effort looks to me like an earlier effort to “save the appearances” in the face of discomfiting contradiction. Thus he writes: "At no stage need irrationality" on the part of markets or their participants "be posited to explain” the collapse of financial markets last year and the current deep recession. For without this underlying assumption, the clock strikes midnight, the stately brougham of Chicago economic theory turns into a pumpkin, and the analytical horses that have pulled it so far over the past half- century turn back into little white mice. ![]() Richard Posner, leader of the Chicago School of Economics and Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals judge, uses his new book, “A Failure of Capitalism,” to try to rescue the Chicago School’s foundational assumption that the economy behaves as if all economic agents and actors are rational, far-sighted calculators. ![]()
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