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Lakatosian Consolations for Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Alexander Rosenberg
Alexander Rosenberg
Affiliation:
Syracuse University
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Extract

The F-twist is giving way to the methodology of scientific research programs. Milton Friedman's “Methodology for Economics” is being supplanted as the orthodox rationale for neoclassical economics by Imre Lakatos' account of scientific respectability. Friedman's instrumentalist thesis that theories are to be judged by the confirmation of their consequences and not the realism of their assumptions has long been widely endorsed by economists, under Paul Samuelson's catchy rubric “the F-twist.” It retains its popularity among economists who want no truck with methodology, but among the increasing number of able economists who are writing on methodology the F-twist has been surrendered, not so much because these writers have decided it is false, as because something better has finally come along.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , April 1986 , pp. 127 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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