ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some point in finance's history humanity bound to arrive at the threshold of physical thinking and its corollary, national economics. The many references to animal behaviour bull, bear, herd, etc. hint at a need to know better how the human will works, the more so if free will is held in high esteem, as by and large it is today. This reference to will is not meant as an excursion into psychology. It is a matter of epistemology. The chapter understands something complex, like the global financial crisis, it is not enough to think superficially, relying on habitual ideas and expressions. Post-Renaissance and more specifically rationalist causality is often one-way and usually runs from the material to the non-material. As further evidence that economics gains from a rapprochement with Romanticism, consider Richard Bronk was impressed by the role of imagination, intuition and creativity in the financial markets, notwithstanding their reliance on mathematical modelling and mechanical language.
