Introduction

Abstract

The central themes in this book involve two interrelated ideas. The first idea is that the divorce between deductive theory and empirical reality in economics, together with the inability of theory to address, let alone resolve, the big issues facing human society in the present and the future, pose critical problems for a discipline that claims to possess social relevance. The second idea, which has considerable quantitative support, is that over the past millennium, human society in Europe has been driven through time by great waves of economic change of some 150 to 300 years in duration. Just as the forces underlying these great waves have been important in the past, they will be important in the future. Without the dimension of time in economics these very longrun forces would remain unknown. While these issues will be dealt with in detail in later chapters, they are explored here in a more general way because of their relevance to the social sciences as a whole.

Wherein past, present, future he beholds

(John Milton, 1667)