The right attitude

I just started Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms, which I was already excited about, largely because Tyler Cowen reviewed and liked it and wrote a series of "Book Forum" posts, which I intend to follow in parallel.

I'm further encouraged by this nicely-worded sentiment from the preface.

Doubtless some of the arguments developed here will prove over-simplified, or merely false. They are certainly controversial, even among my colleagues in economic history. But far better such error than the usual dreary academic sins, which now seem to define so much writing in the humanities, of willful obfuscation and jargon-laden vacuity. As Darwin himself noted, "false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness, and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened." Thus my hope is that, even if the book is wrong in parts, it will be clearly and productively wrong, leading us toward the light.

This is a great attitude - for a scholar, for a book, and definitely for a blog.