I had a great time in class yesterday. It was the required intro class for all PhD candidates, so its mandate is to introduce us to the many different forms of historical scholarship. Yesterday was capitalist-centered economic history. Next week is Marxist history.

I flatter myself to think I'm pretty good at economics, for a historian. I don't freak out when confronted with calculus or statistics, and I do some light reading to keep up with current economic thinking.

Thus I was quite excited that this week our readings were Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and a new book by Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution. (de Vries doesn't have a Wikipedia entry. I think I may fix that tomorrow. He's one of the most widely-read current historians.) Anyway, it was all economic history. It became clear that the other eleven students (nine really, two were absent) had no idea how to handle de Vries, whose text included things like " ∑ p_i x_i = I = T_ww ". Serious Historiansâ„¢ are expected to know a little bit of Greek, but more on the order of "γνῶθι σεαυτόν" ("know thyself"). Math frightens them. I was having a grand old time talking with the professor about de Vries's work, while most of my fellow students were doing their best to hide. [My brother-in-law may recognize the equation from Gary Becker's work, that de Vries was building off of.]

Smith's work was also interesting. I'd never actully read him before, and we were all impressed by how modern he seemed. Not just in that many of his ideas are still essentially dogma, but also his book is written in a more modern style than most of the writings from the 1770s to which I have been exposed. I assume that the editors modernized the spellings, but his sentance and paragraph structure seem comparable to a rather verbose writer of the current time.

The class's one serious Marxist was confused by Smith. She was surprised by the extent of his sympathy for "combinations of workers" (i.e. unions) and his antipathy for and suspicion of capitalists. Still, I was surprised to have to argue with her that Smith wouldn't actually have agreed with Marx. What part of "invisible hand of the market" didn't she understand? Ah well.

Having had a great time in class, I picked up my backpack to leave, only to realize that the red blinking bike light I keep attached to the bag had broken. Curses! But all was not lost. I've been gently teased by my compatriots for never biking without two different red bike lights. Who is laughing now? Eh?

Turns out, I wasn't laughing either, because when I got down to my bike, I discovered that one of my bike toe-clips had become detached. I have no idea how- the clip was apparently undamaged, and the screws that should hold it were still firmly emplaced on the pedal. My best explanation is that gremlins had removed it then put the screws back just to mess with my head.

As a young adult, I carried a multi-tool with me wherever I went. The Marine Corps broke me of that habit, because for aviation maintenance, tool control is very very important. So I was without the resources necessary to fix my bike. I managed to get the dragging clip detached after about 15 minutes of work with my bare hands, which wasn't fun. Just as I finished, it started raining. If I'd not been delayed, I'd have been safely home by that time.

Posted by: Boviate at 01:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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