The rise of political economy as a science : methodology and the classical economists

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The rise of political economy as a science : methodology and the classical economists

Deborah A. Redman

MIT Press, c1997

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注記

Includes bibliographical references (p. [377]-446) and indexes

内容説明・目次

内容説明

The classical age of economics was marked by an intense interest in scientific methodology. It was, moreover, an age when science and philosophy were not yet distinct disciplines, and the educated were polymaths. The classical economists were acutely aware that suitable methods had to be developed before a body of knowledge could be deemed philosophical or scientific. They did not formulate their methodological views in a vacuum, but drew on a rich collection of philosophical ideas. Consequently, issues of methodology were at the heart of political economys rise as a science. The classical era of economics opened under Adam Smith with political economy understood as an integral part of a broader system of social philosophy; by the end, it had emerged via J. S. Mill as a "separate science", albeit one still inextricably tied to the other social sciences and to ethics.The Rise of Political Economy as a Science opens with a review of the epistemological ideas that inspired the classical economists: the methodological principles of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Stewart, Herschel, and Whewell. These principles were influential not just in the development of political economy, but in the rise of social science in general. The author then examines science in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, with a particular emphasis on the all-important concept of induction. Having laid the necessary groundwork, she proceeds to a history and analysis of the methodologies of four economist-philosophers--Adam Smith, Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, and J. S. Mill--selected for their historical importance as founders of economics and for their common Scottish intellectual lineage. Concluding remarks put classical methodology into a broader historical perspective.

目次

  • Part 1 The heritage: introduction - scope, purpose and limitations of this study
  • the philosophical background - thinkers who influenceed the classical economists - Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the philosophy of science, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) - mathematical scientist, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) - philosophizing vs. experimentation, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) - the deductive-mathematical experimental method, John Locke (1632-1704), epistemological uncertainty and the "historical, plain method", David Hume (1711-1776) - pioneer in moral philosophy, Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) and Scottish philosophy of science, Sir John F.W. Herschel (1792-1871) - model philosopher, William Whewell (1794-1866), gentleman of science
  • science in 18th- and 19th-century Britain - the emergence of moral philosophy, the science of man, the method of analysis and synthesis, the clock metaphor, social engineering and the diffusion of economic knowledge, the birth of econometrics
  • a short history of induction - Bacon's theory of induction, a closer look at Newton's third step, the myth of causality and its consequences, induction in the hands of the Scots, induction's heyday - Herschel, Mill and Whewell, Jevons and the decline of induction, the new approach to induction - probability theory, Karl Popper - induction as myth. Part 2 Classical economic methodology: Adam Smith and his "Newtonian method" -the tie to Newton, departures from Newtonian method, the significance of the essay "The History of Astronomy", typing up odds and ends - other clues to Smith's method, the legitimation of science in Smith's system, lessons for today's economist
  • Malthus and Ricardo - opposing or complementary methods? - malleable scientific reputations, education and accomplishments, the methodological dialogue, significance and legacy of the Malthus-Ricardo dialogue
  • John Stuart Mill - last of the Newtonians - the historical setting - interest in philosophy of science awakened, Mill's analysis of the methods of natural science, the development of a method of social science, the inexact science of political economy, Mill on specific methodological issues in political economy, Mill's place in the history and philosophy of science
  • concluding remarks.

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