Materialism, Determinism, and Economics: An Overview

Stephen DeCanio ()

Chapter 1 in Limits of Economic and Social Knowledge, 2014, pp 1-19 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract By uncritically embracing materialism in the mistaken belief that this commitment is an intrinsic element of the scientific method, economics and the other social sciences have taken a wrong turn. The world of inanimate matter is the purview of the natural sciences, but carrying a materialist orientation over to the study of the human and social realms sets off a cascading series of oversimplifications, misconceptions, and outright fallacies that cumulatively can be fatal to genuine understanding.

Keywords: Social Knowledge; Turing Machine; Impossibility Result; Metaphysical Commitment; Inanimate Matter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-37193-5_1

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137371935_1

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