ABSTRACT
George Shackle once wrote a paper entitled “The Hedgehog and the Fox, A Scheme of Economic Theory” (Shackle, 1966, ch. 12). He referred to a line from the poet Archilochus, made famous in contemporary discussion by Isaiah Berlin: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” (ibid., p. 30fn). Shackle explains that the
hedgehog is the system-builder, the seeker after…a theory which explains everything by a unified conception of what the cosmos is…Such a theory might be itself compact, like the acorn, but able to unfold the whole glory of the heavens and the earth, like the oak which so massively arises…from the minute germ. The fox by contrast is the scientist who is content with…understanding one thing at a time by reference, in each case, to an ultimately arbitrary pattern.
