Throughout this book I have borrowed conceptual frameworks, metaphors and ideas from the field of Romantic philosophy and literature, and used them to articulate criticisms of standard economics and formulate amendments to this rationalist discipline. I have argued that lessons from Romanticism can perform two vital functions for economics.

First, they can suggest new ways of understanding and carrying out the business of economics. By underlining that we never have unmediated access to reality in all its multifaceted complexity, the Romantics taught us that we half-create what we see, and that we can never entirely escape the role of perspective and language in structuring our thought. They also stressed the power of the imagination in helping us see the world in a new light. One of the principal duties of the Romantic Economist is to help social scientists face up to how far their observation of data and formulation of research problems and conclusions is structured by the formal models and language they use. Another is to develop methodological and analytical techniques that can enable open-minded and creative use of different perspectives and paradigms at key stages in analysis, so that researchers can avoid having their vision entirely constrained by the dominant paradigm in which they work. In particular, I have argued that there is an important role for multi-perspective scans of data at the initial problem-definition phase of research, combined with disciplined eclecticism designed to ensure that the choice of theory or model is driven by this initial assessment of the problem.