Predicting, Explaining, and Understanding
Predicting, Explaining, and Understanding
An Interdisciplinary Approach
This final chapter sketches a framework that includes interdisciplinary considerations in decisionmaking. First, five different contextsfor behavior, from the family to the global environment, are analyzed with the observation that motivations vary in each. Then an interdisciplinary grid is constructed beginning with Smith’s passions and Veblen’s instincts to form a decision process that allows for a more holistic approach to understanding, explaining, and predicting behavior. The various passions and the instincts are linked with the social institutions that best socialize them. By considering the market, political sphere, civil society, and religion as important in behavior, it is still possible to do discipline-specific work while accounting for interdisciplinary impacts. The chapter concludes with a vignette describing the concerns of Thomas Malthus as a case study with interdisciplinary impacts and questions about long-term energy availability.
Keywords: adam smith, thorstein veblen, interdisciplinary, second-best concept, postmodern
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