More than perhaps any other major social theorist, Niklas Luhmann adopted a perspective on society at the opposite end of the atomistic-holistic spectrum to that of mainstream economics. While the position of mainstream economics is that society is nothing more than a collection of individuals,...

It is generally agreed that mainstream economics follows John Stuart Mill's economic methodology. Since Mill's deductivist methodology was explicitly anti-empirical, this raises the question of to what degree economics is an empirical science. To help answer this question, Gerald Holton's notion...

Tony Lawson has argued that the methodology of neoclassical economics is deductivist: in constructing their formal models, economists hope to be able to provide explanations based on laws, as described by the deductive-nomological model of explanation. This article argues in contrast that...

Searle's notion of the Background, a set of non-intentional mental states which makes intentionality possible, is receiving increasing interest from social theorists. This paper points out two commitments that the notion entails of which social theorists should be wary. The first is Searle's...