Tareia na academia

Deste artigo "Economics is far too important to be left in the care of academics" retiro este trecho delicioso:
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"Yet the issues that many practical economists have to deal with do not yield to bludgeoning by ever more complex systems of equations or intensive torturing of the data by econometrics. They are issues rooted in our nature as human beings living in society. What yields results is usually a mixture of deep understanding of society and its institutions, close knowledge of all the relevant magnitudes, familiarity with the history – and good judgment.
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How can these skills be acquired? Not by studying the modern academic subject called "Economics". In most cases that is almost like undergoing a self-administered lobotomy. Students of economics today are force-fed theoretical models of startling banality and irrelevance, leavened only by doses of econometric techniques of dubious validity and near-zero intellectual interest. Typically, they complete their course knowing nothing about the British economy and untrained in how to think.
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The subject they should have studied is economic history. Yet this is in sharp decline in British universities. And knowledge of political and social history would be pretty useful too. Knowledge of the history of economic thought would be the icing on the cake. Take a mind trained that way, allied to numerical skill and capable of abstract reasoning and you have the perfect economist."
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Ao qual acrescento este outro retirado de "Evolutionary Economics and Creative Destruction" de J. Stanley Metcalfe:
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"A fundamental issue here is whether there is a unique true model of any given situation or a multiplicity of reasonable and equally justifiable explanatory alternatives. Wilson (1990) has raised this in his contrast between rational world views and adaptive imaginary representations or fictional worlds which simplify complex reality and provide a set of instructions (exemplar algorithms) on how to respond to certain circumstances. While the rational views are to be judged by their truth, the latter are to be judged by their operational effectiveness.(Moi ici: É preciso ter muita humildade à la Kepler, para aceitar isto) They are ‘technological’ rather than ‘scientific’; they are the epitomy of rule guided, trial and error behaviour. So it is, I believe, with firms. Every firm has a world view, its theory of business which defines its objectives and modus operandi, and this view is an adaptive imaginary representation to be tested by its differential efficiency in generating profit. In this regard the accumulation of managerial knowledge is no different from the accumulation of engineering knowledge but radically different from that in science. Knowledge, and particularly business knowledge, is gained primarily through trial and error processes within constraints set by the theory of business and the accumulated wisdom of the past. If a practice or concept works it is retained, if not it is rejected. Thus learning is path dependent and unique to each specific learning context.
A good starting point is the claim that firms differ in their behaviour to the extent that they hold different, reasonable theories of business. This provides a direct link with the modern treatment of capabilities (DeLiso and Metcalfe, 1996; Montgomery, 1995; Leonard-Barton, 1995; Foss, 1996; Loasby, 1991), building upon and extending the routine-based perspective on the firm. Capabilities are combinations of resources and routines articulated in the context of the prevailing business theory. As such they depend very much on matters of organization and communication within the firm and between it and its market environment, to a degree they are socially constructed. Thus differences in business theories and differences in organizational operators provide compelling reasons for differences in behaviour."
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O conhecimento da história permite constatar o que resultou e o que não resultou, independentemente da teoria.