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History of Economic Thought chapter 1 summary
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Summary of the first (1st) section of the course "History of Economic Thought".
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Week 1 chapter 1 “A quest for truth, a solid foundation”Many of the modern day methodologist views are derived as reactions to one main view called the
logical positivists movement. It strived to ascertain what was real truth (verificationism). The
movement was pioneered by the Vienna Circle. Logicism means that all scientific material is an
extension of pure logic. Positivism which refers to empiricism, inherently means that knowledge
arises out of sense experiences, knowledge is based on evidence from real world experiences. The
movements goal was to set the boundaries of scientific knowledge separate it from pseudo-science
by removing any “imagined content” from knowledge. To get rid of metaphysical claims i.e. get rid of
things that are thought to be so but cannot be observed. The boundary encompasses analytical
propositions (these are true by definition) and synthetic a posteriori propositions which are non-
analytical propositions which are known to be true by empirical research i.e. evidence. To be
excluded from the boundary was synthetic a priori propositions because these draw heavily on
metaphysical knowledge. There must a clear assertion that the predicates (a clause stating
something about the other) implied can be verifiable by sense perception (empiricism). This criterion
of meaningfulness is called the verifiability principle. This meant that scientific knowledge was only
possible as sensory experiences are observable and clear predicates can be made. From these
observations syntactics can be derived which express the formal relationship. Then semantics deal
with the significance and interpretation of these formal relationships. The end goal is to derive
precise definitions of central scientific notions such as theory, explanation and confirmation.
Logical positivists argue that a distinction should be drawn between the context of discovery and
justification. They argued that the only real context that mattered was justification, the how was of
no relevance. They also drew distinction between theory and its subsequent facts, data and
evidence. Scientific theories are a systematic collection of principles that organize the world. The
concept of axiomatization which reduces a theory to a set of axioms in first order formal language
i.e. signs and symbols. These theoretical relationships are essentially syntactics. Theory is thus
compiled into observational statements and theoretical statements formalizing the observational
statements. The conversion is specified by correspondence rules. If all theory is backed up by
observations in good correspondence they are said to be operationalized. The difficulty lies in
defining the terms for correspondence i.e. when is someone jobless.
Note the distinction between operationalization and operationalism. Operationalization refers to the
establishment of correspondence between theory and observations. Operationalism refers to the
extreme measure of empiricism in which everything must be meticulously defined to acquire
precisely correct correspondence.
A scientific explanation must not just explain why but also show how it is an instance of a law. This
can be done using the Deductive-nomological model of explanation (DN):
Explanans (set of true statements)
Laws (nomos)
Initial conditions
Explanandum (what is to explained)
However this model focusses only on logical deduction and not the significance and meaning of the
terms used. Moreover explanans have to be laws but there is no good measure of separating them
form accidental regularities. We must require the explanans to fit in unrestricted domains and then
thus always count, for them to be a true universal law. It is almost impossible to define laws in such a
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