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Blog: January
The end of laissez-faire
The end of laissez-faire (1926)[...] The parallelism between economic laissez-fare and Darwinianism, already briefly noted, is now seen, as Herbert Spencer was foremost to recognize, to be very close indeed. Just as Darwin invoked sexual love, acting through sexual selection, as an adjutant to Natural Selection by competition, to direct evolution along lines which should be desirable as well as effective, so the individualist invokes the love of money, acting through the pursuit of profit, as an adjutant to Natural Selection, to bring about the production on the greatest possible scale of what is most strongly desired as measured by exchange value. The beauty and the simplicity of such a theory are so great that it is easy to forget that it follows not from the actual facts, but from an incomplete hypothesis introduced for the sake of simplicity. Apart from other objections to be mentioned later, the conclusion that individuals acting independently for their own advantage will produce the greatest aggregate of wealth, depends on a variety of unreal assumptions to the effect that the processes of production and consumption are in no way organic, that there exists a sufficient foreknowledge of conditions and requirements, and that there are adequate opportunities of obtaining this foreknowledge. For economists generally reserve for the later stage of their argument [...] their analysis of the actual facts.
[...]
But the principles of laissez-faire have had other allies besides economic text-books. It must be admitted that they have been confirmed in the minds of sound thinkers and the reasonable public by the poor quality of the opponent proposals--Protectionism on one hand, and Marxian Socialism on the other. Yet these doctrines are both characterized, not only or chiefly by their infringing the general presumption in favour of laissez-faire, but by mere logical fallacy. Both are examples of poor thinking, of inability to analyse a process and follow it out to its conclusion. The argument against them, though reinforced by the principle of laissez-faire, do not strictly require it. Of the two, Protectionism is at least plausible, and the forces making for its popularity are nothing to wonder at. But Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion--how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history. At any rate, the obvious scientific deficiencies of these two schools greatly contributed to the prestige and authority of nineteenth-century laissez-faire. [p. 32]
John Maynard Keynes
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Ruwet on musical analysis
Methods of analysis in musicology (1966)[going from the message to the code, i.e. in analysis] The work of the analyst then consists of deconstructing and manipulating the corpus (all given messages) in various ways in order to derive the units, classes of units, and rules of their combination which together constitute the code. [...] Once the code has been deciphered, a reverse procedure allows the generation of messages from this code [...].
[...] A code consists essentially of two parts: inventories of elements, and rules of their combination and operation. Now, analytical models tend to favour the inventory, whilst neglecting the question of rules.
[...] it remains the case that explicit discovery procedures, even if partially insufficient, are indispensable, if only to guarantee that the synthetic model will not change into a normative system.
[...] consider the present state of musicology from the perspective of the distinction between the two models [analystic and synthetic]. a) that the theoretical problem of this distinction has never been raised; b) that no analytical model has ever been explicitly elaborated; c) that musical analyses [...] do not formulate the discovery criteria on which they depend.
Nicolas Ruwet
Artist as illusionist
If we, as mischievous scientists, happen to separate out the cues associated with legitimate clustering and to manipulate them independently, then it should come as no surprise that we can "fool" the ear into perceiving "illusions." [p.13]Rhythm and Transforms (2007)
William A. Sethares
