Historians have a survivor bias of the theories that turned out to be right, he says. And it would be unfair to go back and say any statement by adam smith 250 years ago was wrong? Well, of course, there are probably some, if you go through. Not everything that these people, like galileo said turning out to be right. For that matter, there's a lot of a question about some of the specifics of darwin.
In episode 162 of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael speaks with one of the nation’s preeminent experts on economic policy, Benjamin Friedman, about his new book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism — a major reassessment of the foundations of modern economic thinking that explores the profound influence of an until-now unrecognized force — religion.
Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets — among economists as well as many ordinary citizens — is a form of religion. And, it turns out, that in a deeper, more historically grounded sense there is something to that idea. Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset.