Has Economics Lost Its Own Identity?

Slavica Manic

Asian Economic and Financial Review, 2014, vol. 4, issue 9, 1190-1200

Abstract: Dealing with economic science from the methodological point of view represents an unusual challenge. Primarily owing to the fact that there is a whole spectrum of opinions on how economics is supposed to be studied. Besides, the very idea of the methodology and the way it evolved over time gave the opportunity to consider direction in which economic science moves. Deprived of previously analyzed (and until recently neglected) knowledge of the philosophy of science, and prone to bypassing certain economic facts, economics has lost its own identity finding itself in a situation that could be described as “vague”. Although it succeeds (thanks to the insistence on exactness) to sustain imperial status in relation to other social sciences, economic science almost simultaneously has become just a “trophy” for those disciplines being exact a long time ago. Such a positioning of economics constitutes the initial impulse for writing this paper. Certainly, it is illusory to expect that it is feasible to elaborate in detail everything that touches the above-mentioned issues. That is why the claims of this article are far more modest. The aim is to make a review of relevant literature that offers different views comparing to orthodox one which dominates economic science. Since absolute truth is not guaranteed to any science (complete confidence, as a rule, comes from ignorance), we believe that reference to such standpoints (supporting the thesis that economic science does not develop in a constructive way) is desirable because it can initiate a new debate and possibly produce fresh and/or more appropriate ideas on how economics should be further developed.

Keywords: Economic methodology; Economic science; Mainstream economics; Economic imperialism; Methodological pluralism; Critical realism. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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