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

Abstract

Part 1 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 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 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 method -the tie to Newton, departures from Newtonian the significance of the essay The History of Astronomy, typing up odds and ends - other clues to Smith's 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 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.