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What is an Empiricist? Wesley Clair Mitchell in Broader Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Abraham Hirsch
Abraham Hirsch
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College
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Extract

The historian of economics encounters special difficulties in dealing with a heterodox economist. When one considers someone who is orthodox, basic notions can be taken for granted, and this enables the historian to zero in on meaningful issues without first having to provide an extensive introduction dealing with fundamental notions which have to be understood if the significance of what is being said is to be grasped. On the other hand, if one omits this step when dealing with the heterodox the analysis is not likely to be very meaningful. This special difficulty is much compounded where the heterodoxy is methodological, as it is with Wesley Clair Mitchell. What Mitchell tried to do was to reconstruct economics, to convince economists to adopt a different approach to the very way they conduct their inquiries. John Stuart Mill had laid down the law that extensive observation of specific experience was of no help in the attempt to derive economic theory, and mainstream economists generally went along with him on this. Mitchell disagreed and attempted to show that by building on different foundations a more “scientific” and useful economics could be derived. The interesting question for the historian of economics is: What can we learn from Mitchell's experience? It is here that we run into the problem that I noted at the outset.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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