Comment of the Day: : Why is it that Tocqueville, Keynes, and Polanyi are still "it" as far as policy-relevant useful social theory is concerned?: "That is an interesting thought. Is it that T, K and P are 'it'...
...or that they were 'it' and it still hasn't sunk in yet?
Were they somehow a zenith and we've forgotten much of what preceded them and what those who came after were doing and, perhaps, just perhaps, we are not yet to the next zenith. Think about the 17th century English religious and metaphysical poets (Marvell, Vaughan, Donne, Herbert, Crashaw). They were really trying something new, straining the form to its limits (a love poem about blood mingling inside a flea during a mass got Donne laid? Wow!), breaking it and when Crashaw hit the new form out of the park (The Weeper), it took a while to notice it was the zenith of the genre and a long time for poets to move on to new forms and a long time to realize they had even needed to move on.
1979's The Clash's 'London Calling' and The Ramones' punk-pop 'Pleasant Dreams' (1981) was the end of the big-sound, long play, dramatic rock opera genre, but it took a while to notice the art form had been changed and The Whos and Pink Floyds of the previous genre still hung (hang) on for a long time, too (The Stones figured it out, so did Neil Young IMHO). Doesn't mean The Whos of the world were no longer relevant, just that the art form had been changed so dramatically that it took a long time to figure out what the change meant.
Maybe, we're just in between the next 'something' in economics and we have yet to realize Keynes was the zenith. Fractals were selected against. Maybe neuroeconomics will yield something 'wow' but so far it is more 'meh' (again, IMHO). It is interesting that behavioral econ is (slightly) more polymath than traditional micro and as Noah Smith has written, the econ barbarians are invading sociology more and more. This should be a good thing.
Or, not.
