Evolutionary realism: a new ontology for economics

Kurt Dopfer () and Jason Potts

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2004, vol. 11, issue 2, 195-212

Abstract: The renaissance in evolutionary economics in the past two decades has brought with it a great deal of theoretical development and interdisciplinary import. Much of this has been useful, but not all of it has been commensurate. In this paper, we make the case for the limits to theoretical developments that lack clearly specified ontological commitments by attempting an inductive synthesis of the ontological content of empirical generalizations in evolutionary economics. We call this 'evolutionary realism' and present it in three axioms - (1) all existences are bimodal matter-energy actualizations of ideas, (2) all existences associate, and (3) all existences are processes. We conclude with discussion of the sort of analytical framework that we might consistently build on these axioms; a three-level analytical structure of micro, meso and macro domains.

Keywords: ontology; evolutionary realism; micro-meso-macro economics framework; structure; process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13501780410001694127 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:11:y:2004:i:2:p:195-212

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJEC20

DOI: 10.1080/13501780410001694127

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Methodology is currently edited by John Davis and D Wade Hands

More articles in Journal of Economic Methodology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().