Heuristics for metascience: Simon and Popper

Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos, Julian N. Marewski and Ulrich Hoffrage

Chapter 14 in Elgar Companion to Herbert Simon, 2024, pp 300-311 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Herbert Simon had a knack for formal models, but also managed to see them for what they are in science - tools for supporting theoretical development that must be grounded empirically. The first contribution of this chapter is to show how Simon’s formal, grounded models apply to metascience, that is, the scientific study of science. Examining Simon’s ideas on two pillars of metascience, discovery and justification, we find that they contrast with those of a giant of the field, Karl Popper. We argue that the contrasts can be traced to the distinction between logical and ecological rationality. The second contribution of the chapter is to uncover a common component in Simon’s ideas for discovery and justification: heuristics. Heuristics are tools for decision making and problem solving that match specific contexts; that is, they are ecologically rational tools. Along the way, we also go beyond some of Simon’s ideas, such as data-fitting heuristics for discovery, and discuss heuristics in the form of simple, actionable principles guiding discovery. But we would not have been able to carry on Simon’s ideas further without him having first articulated his extraordinary thinking.

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781800370685.00025 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:19952_14

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().