About Conceptual Schemes for the Development of Economic Science

Abstract

We carried out a theoretical analysis of various concepts used to describe and explain the development, progress and evolution of economic theory (economic science). The study found that the dynamics and transformations of economic theory were described using models of the development of scientific knowledge of three prominent philosophers and thinkers, namely: K.R. Popper, T. Kuhn and I. Lakatos. Nevertheless, the merits of each of these conceptual schemes are balanced by shortcomings, following mainly from the fact that K.R. Popper, T. Kuhn and I. Lakatos's concepts were developed to analyze the development of natural science knowledge. In this regard, an attempt was made to describe and explain the development of economic science through the use of an earlier approach - the law of the intellectual evolution of humanity by A. Comte. This approach reveals its advantages, expressed in the simplicity of presentation, openness to further research and interpretation of new results in the field of research on the development of economic thought. At the same time, it is worth noting the existence of shortcomings of the author's approach, consisting in the difficulty of establishing a chronological framework for the development of economic theory, the impossibility of using the A. Comte's law to describe the evolution of all economic schools, the fuzziness of the boundaries (periods) of the development of economic knowledge and a simplified understanding of the development of science itself as non-discontinuous progress - improvement.