The discipline of economics can benefit a more explicit, systematic and sustained concern with ontology, that is, with the philosophical analysis of the nature of the social world. Contrary to the argument advanced in an article recently published in Critical Review (Steele 2005), the...

Recent developments in the methodology of economics have drawn upon pragmatist and realist philosophies of social science. These recent developments are outlined. It is argued that a specific variant of realist philosophy known as critical realism can provide the basis for a prescriptive...

Tony Lawson has long advocated an ‘ontological turn' in the history of economic thought. This essay aims to contribute towards that goal by considering how one aspect of the methodology adopted of a prominent heterodox economist was informed by ontological considerations. The economist is...

This paper is the introduction to a special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics on the topic of ontology and the history of economic thought. It explains what is meant by social ontology and why ontological issues should be taken seriously by historians of economic thought. It then goes...

Historians of economic thought are paying greater attention to issues of social ontology (that is, to the assumptions that economists make about the nature of social reality). In this paper, we contribute to this burgeoning literature by exploring the hitherto neglected way in which James...