I must admit I am not overly familiar with McCloskey's work but what I have read is quite interesting and a lot easier to digest than a lot of economic papers that get lost in the details. Economists (more likely mathematicians posing as economists) too often focus on numbers rather than the implications of the numbers or the relative importance. Some economists go the other way and dismiss numbers and stick purely with qualitative. I strongly believe that both are wrong.

Mathematics should be a means to an end and not an end in itself. E.g. What does interest rate of 4% actually tell us? Another example is ordinal vs cardinal utility. Ordinal relies purely on ranking while cardinal relies on assigning values. By themselves, I would argue, neither are particularly helpful. I would love to go into more details but I don't want to turn this comment into a thesis. I am also heading out to watch 'Rampage' at the cinema. Sounds like an awesome movie.