REVIEW OF Thomas A Boylan and Paschal F O’Gorman (eds) “Popper and Economic Methodology: Contemporary Challenges” Routledge, 2008.
In recent decades the philosophy and methodology of economics has become a thriving academic industry. Ten years ago Wade Hands noted that Popper was the most influential philosopher in the movement, although there is mounting concern about the nature of that influence. This collection of papers can be seen as a response to that concern. It is number nine in the Routledge International Network for Economic Methodology (INEM) series.
The book is a product of an International Symposium at the University of Galway, convened in 2002 to mark the centenary of Popper’s birth. It can be placed alongside the proceedings from Centenary Conferences that were held in Vienna and in Christchurch, New Zealand, where Popper wrote “The Open Society and its Enemies” and “The Poverty of Historicism” during World War 2. Another volume for the set is the published papers from the 2007 Prague conference on the theme Rethinking Popper.
The editors explain that the conference was designed to explore some of the major themes in Popper’s work, and to illuminate some aspects that are not generally recognised.
“Among the principal themes addressed in this volume are a number of major tensions in Popper’s contribution to economic methodology. More specifically these tensions result from two divergent trends in Popper’s thought. One trend emerges from his demarcation criterion as contained in his doctrine of falsifiability. The alternative trend is contained in Popper’s situational analysis [and] his rationality principle.” (xi)
“The second major issue explored is based on a critical reading of Popper’s later work [where] the universe is perceived as an open system, untainted by determinism. Under the shadow of this Popperian thesis, orthodox economics is the only social science to have attained the maturity of Newtonian physics. The implications of Popperian open systems for economic methodology have been ignored to-date in the literature on economic methodology. This challenge is addressed…” (xii)
Before looking at the papers, a word of caution. There is a question mark hanging over the whole field. What have working economists gained from this academic growth area? That can be regarded as an “external” critique. On the inside, what progress has been made since, say, 1980 when Blaug’s landmark work in the field was published? More on these questions later.
The whole review can be seen here.
