Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Exordium
- Part II Narration
- Part III Division
- 5 The Science word in economics
- 6 Three ways of reading economics to criticize itself
- 7 Popper and Lakatos: thin ways of reading economics
- 8 Thick readings: ethics, economics, sociology, and rhetoric
- Part IV Proof
- Part V Refutation
- Part VI Peroration
- List of works cited
- Index
8 - Thick readings: ethics, economics, sociology, and rhetoric
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Exordium
- Part II Narration
- Part III Division
- 5 The Science word in economics
- 6 Three ways of reading economics to criticize itself
- 7 Popper and Lakatos: thin ways of reading economics
- 8 Thick readings: ethics, economics, sociology, and rhetoric
- Part IV Proof
- Part V Refutation
- Part VI Peroration
- List of works cited
- Index
Summary
If Methodology — Popperian, Lakatosian, or whatever — is not a guide to the history of thought or a guide to the completion of science, one may ask, what is it a guide to? What, really, is the philosophy of economic science about?
The answer appears to be that it is about morality for scientists. In this the philosophers commit no sin. Popper and company are not so much concerned to tell a persuasive story or lead a march to Truth as to persuade scientists to be good. Listen to these phrases from Blaug's Popperian book of 1980, The Methodology of Economics: “what is wrong is that economists do not practice what they preach” (p. xiii); “Feyerabend's book amounts to replacing the philosophy of science by the philosophy of flower power” (p. 44); “the scientific community is the paradigm case of the open society” (p. 46); “much of [modern economics] is like playing tennis with the net down: instead of attempting to refute testable predictions, modern economists all too frequently are satisfied to … [replace] falsification, which is difficult, with verification, which is easy” (p. 256); “What methodology can do is to … [set] standards that will help us to discriminate between wheat and chaff … [T]he ultimate question we can and indeed must pose about any research program is the one made familiar by Popper: what events, if they materialized, would lead us to reject that program? A program that cannot meet that question has fallen short of the highest standards that scientific knowledge can attain” (p. 264).
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- Chapter
- Information
- Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics , pp. 94 - 108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994