Saturday, November 27, 2010
Sherlock Holmes and economics
Think of a fictional character from a novel being very used in economics. Maybe, the first comes to your mind is Robinson Crusoe. It is so widely used that some people even talk about "Crusoe economics", the economics of an agent without interaction with others. Nevertheless, I find even more interesting the character of Sherlock Holmes. I guess he is the role model of what a good economist (any scientist, indeed) must aspire to be: "the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen". Even if you don't agree with his method (I particularly don't think it to be as efficient as Conan Doyle depicts it), I guess you can, with great benefit for economics, define and debate about a sort of "Holmes epistemics".
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2 comments:
This is the funniest thing. I recently postulated that Hercule Poirot was a archetypal thymologist and contrasted him to Holmes. I believe that Holmes' method in it's lack of regard towards the humanity of actors, and psychology in general, would be less useful than Poirot's. :)
See http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-big-money-mysteries-we-have-to-solve-to-survive-2014-01-18/print?guid=5E2A60A0-7F9E-11E3-B3D5-00212803FAD6
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