On a maze of second thoughts and on the methodology of economic methodology

This paper considers the debate surrounding the elucidation of Laka-tosian novel facts in Keynesian macroeconomics. An analysis of this debate highlights how, in the process of using methodologies to appraise economics, economic methodologists have been forced into adopting the methodology of historiographic research programmes (MHRP) as a method of appraising methodologies. It is argued here that the failure to find Lakatosian novel facts in Keynesian macroeconomics has prompted economic methodologists to consider the appropriateness of MHRP as a method of meta-methodological appraisal. This paper suggests that the failure to find Lakatosian novel facts in economics must necessarily lead economic methodologists into a Kuhnian-type investigation of what it is that economists actually do.