Mathematics professor finds McCloskey’s Rhetoric of Economics helpful in preparing his own book.
Excerpt:
I’m reading some fascinating works on writing and rhetoric in preparation for various parts of my book. Most recently I’ve begun Deirdre McCloskey’s The Rhetoric of Economics (2nd edition, 1998, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press), a delightful rhetorical analysis of economic discourse in which she dissects the ways in which economists convince one another and others of the truth of their assertions. According to McCloskey, much of what many economists consider unassailable scientific truth is really rhetorical “smoke and mirrors.”
