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Making a Case When Theory is Unfalsifiable

Friedman's Monetary History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Abraham Hirsch  and
Neil de Marchi
Abraham Hirsch
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Neil de Marchi
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

Milton Friedman's famous methodological essay contains, along with much else, some strands that look as though they were taken from the “empirical-scientific” fabric described by Karl Popper (Popper, 1959, pp. 32, 37; see also Klant, 1984, pp. 33ff. for a very clear discussion). Think, for example, of Friedman's conviction that the way to test a (theoretically embedded) hypothesis is to compare its implications with experience (Friedman, 1953a in 1953b, pp. 9, 13, 14). Or of his more or less explicit espousal of the view that while no amount of facts can ever prove a hypothesis true, a single “fact” may refute it (ibid., p. 9). Or of his assertion that hypotheses are to be accepted only as provisionally true (ibid., p. 41), and then only after repeated efforts to refute them have failed (ibid., pp. 9, 22–23). The appearance of these Popperian ideas is not surprising.

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , April 1986 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

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