Paradigms and Progress

 

1. Has the development of economic thought involved Kuhnian ‘revolutions’ – paradigm shifts?

 

With reference to:

 

            Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chapters VI, VIII esp. p 77-80.

 

            Deane, P. ‘Paradigms in economics: I, the concept of a paradigm and its relevance to the history of economic ideas.’  (Marshall Library)

 

            Latsis, S.J. (ed.).  Method and Appraisal in Economics, esp. essays by Latsis, Leijonhufvud and Blaug.

 

(a)    Elements in Kuhn’s approach: his concept of ‘paradigm’ (number of possible meanings); the idea of ‘normal science’; contrast between his view on ‘refutation’ and Popper’s; anomalies and ‘crisis’; ‘revolution’ with a shift in the ruling paradigm (change in perspective / world view); incommensurability of paradigm (implying relativism?)

(b)   Candidates for the status of paradigm in the history of economic ideas (see Deane’s comments on: Smith, Ricardo, Marx, the Marginal ‘Revolution’,  Keynes; and her conclusion: ‘In effect, (economists) have inherited not only a plurality of paradigms but a plurality of unpredictably changing paradigms.’).

 

2. Comparison of criteria for progress in the natural sciences and in economic analysis (is economics a science at all?)

 

With reference to:

 

            Deane, P. ‘Paradigms in economics: II, the paradigm as the key to scientific progress in economics.’ (Marshall Library).

 

Reflections: Approach of Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend.

 

Kuhn’s focus more historical and sociological, Popper’s and Lakatos’s more normative?

 

Have any economic theories been falsified?  Are any falsifiable?  Does economics seem more scientific on Popper’s second criterion for scientific status (a ‘critical attitude’: ‘The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in (passing) on a critical attitude towards [its theories]’ p 50) than on his first (falsifiability of its theories, where ‘The criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability’, p 37)?

 

Special features of the social sciences, e.g. difficulty over access to controlled experiments, interaction of theories and phenomena being studied (self-fulfilling prophecies), problem-of-the-day dimension in the setting of research agendas (Deane), etc.

 

Arguments for benefits from the survival of a plurality of rival theories in economics (Deane, around 1980: ‘The economics graduate starting research for a Ph.D. can, in principle, choose whether to operate within a neoclassical or a monetarist or a Marxian or a post-Keynsian analytical framework’; and see Feyerabend, Against Method).

 

Further literatures: see main reading list, e.g. Lakatos and Musgrave (eds.). Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, esp. essays by Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos and Feyerbend; McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics; Caldwell, Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century; Wiles and Routh, Economics in Disarray.

 

(Dr. J G T Meeks)