Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T21:11:06.795Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The Methodological Tradition in Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

D. Wade Hands
Affiliation:
University of Puget Sound, Washington
Get access

Summary

In the definition which we have attempted to frame of the science of Political Economy, we have characterized it as essentially an abstract science, and its method as the method a priori.

[Mill 1874, p. 143]

I have been increasingly moved to wonder whether my job is a job or a racket, whether economists, and particularly economic theorists, may not be in the position that Cicero … ascribed to the augurs of Rome – that they should cover their faces or burst into laughter when they met on the street.

[Knight 1956, p. 252]

By the time I had come to work on my doctoral dissertation, I had somehow absorbed Popperian falsificationism without ever reading Popper. Some of it I acquired from Milton Friedman's classic essay “The Methodology of Positive Economics” (1953), which, without mentioning Popper, presents a sort of vulgar, Mickey Mouse Popperianism.

[Blaug 1994a, p. 22]

This chapter will survey the field of economic methodology as it existed in the Anglo-American literature prior to the revival of the last few decades. Although I realize that any attempt to “survey” such a wide-ranging and diverse literature in such a brief amount of space will undoubtedly do an injustice to many authors and many ideas, I hope the injustices are mitigated by the contents of the remaining chapters. The various positions that are introduced here will resurface again and again in later chapters: sometimes as fodder for opposing views, sometimes as reinterpretations, and sometimes as exemplars of particular methodological positions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Reflection without Rules
Economic Methodology and Contemporary Science Theory
, pp. 13 - 69
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×