Making Economic Knowledge: Review of Jan Golinski's Making Natural Knowledge

When I went through my graduate training in economics at Stanford University, I learned that economics consists of ideas. These are often expressed in mathematical terms and can be found in books and articles. To become a successful economist, you have to understand these ideas and come up with variations on them. So, during my first year of graduate studies, I spent the majority of my time working my way through the many books and articles assigned for my classes in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics. During their lectures, our instructors would walk us through any difficult mathematical manipulations that we encountered in our readings. Surely, I thought, I was on my way to becoming a respected economist. Still, I needed to specialize in a few fields, which I did in my second year.