¹ Harrod, R. F., “Scope and Method of Economics,” Economic Journal, 09, 1938, 385.Google Scholar

² One might legitimately ask whether this severely reduced role justifies the great amount of energy which has gone into methodological discussion. The truth of the matter is that the contribution of methodology to the progress of a science is inevitably small. It has attracted so much study not because of its actual or potential value but because of the irresistible fascination of the mental vistas which it opens to the student. It is the area where economics becomes the study of physics, philosophy, and art. To those who cannot abide the prospect of knowing more and more about less and less it holds what is at least an alternative prospect of knowing less and less about more and more.

³ I have attempted to indicate the distinctness and importance of these alternatives in “The Pragmatic Basis of Economic Theory,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XVI, 11, 1950, 475–500.Google Scholar