The Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory: A Reply to Professor Knight

2006 HES Presidential address a Tale of two Mainstreams: Economics and Philosophy of Natural Science in the Mid-Twentieth Century

“…This question, a question that has played a major role in methodological writing from Hutchison (1938) through Blaug (1992), Caldwell (1994), Hausman (1992), and others-and one, I might add, that has, directly or indirectly, occupied a large amount of my own professional attention (Hands 2001)-is quite different from the question here. The methodological question asks whether economic practice conforms to what certain philosophers say about science in general, and I will focus on how the disciplines themselves compare.…”

Orthodox and heterodox economics in recent economic methodology

“…Ideas from the (assumed given and stable) shelf of scientific philosophy were simply taken off the shelf and "applied" to the science of economics without reconfiguration or with much sensitivity to the peculiarities of the discipline. In the case of both Blaug and Hutchison, the relevant philosophical shelf was Popperian-based on Karl Popper's philosophy of science (1959,1965,1994)-and according to Popper in order to qualify as a real science a discipline needed to make bold 6 A non-exhaustive list of their important contributions to the methodological literature includes: Blaug 1976Blaug , 1980aBlaug /1992Blaug , 1990Blaug , 1994Blaug , 2002Blaug , 2003and Hutchison 1938and Hutchison , 1981and Hutchison , 1988and Hutchison , 1992and Hutchison , 2000and Hutchison , 2009 (falsifiable, non ad hoc) conjectures and subject those conjectures to severe empirical tests. 7 There are of course many well-documented problems associated with Popperian falsificationism-in general, as well as when specifically applied to economics-but that is not my topic here.…”

“…Not to neglect the other side of the political spectrum, Blaug also had harsh methodological words for Austrian economists, particular Ludwig von Mises (Blaug 1980a(Blaug /1992. Similarly, Hutchison's first book (Hutchison 1938) was primarily a methodological critique of Lionel Robbins's Nature and significance (1932/1952), but it focused on the Austrian influence in Robbins's work. Hutchison continued to criticize Austrian economics throughout his life (Hutchison 1981) and while, like Blaug, the main methodological villain was von Mises, he included others such as Friedrich Hayek as well (Caldwell 2009).…”

Effective Tension in Robbins's Economic Methodology

“…Robbins's Essay has been the subject of extensive methodological commentary -with Terence Hutchison (1938) delivering one of the earliest and most influential -although less, perhaps, than some other major methodological works, particularly John Stuart Mill (1874) and Milton Friedman (1953). The majority of the critical commentary has focused on the degree of a priorism of Robbins position and his arguments against interpersonal utility comparisons (see the discussion in surveys of methodology such as Blaug 1992, Caldwell 1994, and Hands 2001.…”