Isn’t it time that we get rid of this crazy myth! Susan J. Matt thinks that historians can help undermine this myth. She says: “It is time we recognize that rationality is an elusive quantity, defined and redefined by social habit and market forces, and that rational man is a chimera. His purported behavior has not held steady across the centuries, nor has his personality. Yet economists have clung to this abstraction because he is a convenient factor in their equations. Robert Heilbroner remarked, “Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis.” To breathe new life into their studies, economists should create a new homo economicus—one who acts on more than self- interest and whose emotions change over time. Such a creature may not fit into math equations as easily as the rational actor did, but he will more accurately reflect how and why individuals make the economic choices they do.”