The aim of this paper is to investigate the current debate on the state of economics from a methodological perspective. We claim that the majority of contributions criticizing modern economics are not based on clear methodological principles and thus many of them are not correct. We show this...

This paper investigates the standard economic paradigm as to the possibility for the agents to become revolutionaries, i.e., to develop the desire and effective action to overturn the prevailing social order. We take our cue from Amartya Sen’s remark that the Second Fundamental Theorem of...

The main point of this paper is to contribute to understanding Milton Friedman’s (1953) “The Methodology of Positive Economics” (hereafter F1953), one of the most influential statements of economic methodology of the twentieth century, and, in doing so, help discern the non trivial but...

This essay examines how the field of economics works, understood to be the space of symbolic production of economic knowledge and its distribution networks. It therefore analyzes the relationship between the producing agents and the institutions involved. The economy is a scientific field with...

The rhetoric of positivism had a profound effect on the worldview and practice of economists in the middle of the last century. Though this influence has greatly diminished, it still may be found in the attitude of many economists towards the history of their discipline. This paper traces the...

When Robbins' Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science was first published, it was mostly criticized for depriving economists of an important professional market (policy advice) and for detaching economics from policy considerations. Most critics considered Robbins' Essay as the...

The rhetoric of positivism had a profound effect on the worldview and practice of economists in the middle of the last century. Though this influence has greatly diminished, it still may be found in the attitude of many economists towards the history of their discipline. This paper traces the...

I argue that economists have reasons internal to the way that evidence works in the sciences to re-discover the importance of the history of their own discipline. For it is a constitutive element of science - here conceived as an ongoing research practice (as opposed to as an explanatory...

My purpose is to appraise the recent critique of theoretical economics by applying the methodological perspective. Therefore, I start by identifying the main lines of criticism raised against theoretical economics in the aftermath of the post-2008 global economic crisis: namely, the voices...

Mathematics, like medieval Latin, is a medium of disputation in economics wherein those skillful in its use can subdue those who are not, independent of any substantive economic meaning. In so using mathematics, economics has shut itself off from much of the richness of economic activity that is...