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But It Will Never Be Science, Either

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Andrew Rutten
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Abstract

In the neoclassical-cliometric view of historical events, earlier concerns with economic change over time are now “out of bounds.” This narrowing has been justified by the supposed demands of scientific rigor, but a new model of science suggests that this need not be so. Science does not have any single goal or method. Science demands that economic historians develop whatever tools are needed to solve the problems they face. Examples of this already exist.

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Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 1980, pp. 137 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1980

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References

1 McCloskey, Donald, “Does the Past Have Useful Economics?” Journal of Economic Literature, 14 (June 1976), 434–61Google Scholar.

2 Hughes, Jonathan R. T., “Fact and Theory in Economic History,” Purdue Faculty Papers in Economic History, 1956–1966 (Homewood, Ill., 1967), p. 56Google Scholar; first published in Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2nd ser., 3 (Winter 1966), 95Google Scholar.

3 See North, Douglass C., “Structure and Performance: The Task of Economic History,” Journal of Economic Literature, 16 (Sept. 1978), 963–78Google Scholar.

4 A good introduction to the developments in philosophy of science in the past decade is found in the editor's remarks in Suppe, Frederick, ed., The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2nd. ed. (Urbana, 1977), pp. 3–241Google Scholar, 617–730.

5 The exact nature of this connection is hard to discern. For example, in a recent attack on econometrics, an Austrian economist cites a methodological treatise by two neo-Marxists, Hollis and Nell, with favor; Rizzo, Mario, “Praxeology and Econometrics: A Critique of Positivist Economics,” in Spadaro, Louis, ed., New Directions in Austrian Economics (Kansas City, 1978), pp. 44–48Google Scholar.

6 Feyerabend, Paul, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge (London, 1975), pp. 27–28Google Scholar.

7 Various simple formulations that have been proposed as the aim or method of science are tested and found wanting in Toulmin, Stephen, Foresight and Understanding. An Inquiry into the Aims of Science (New York, 1963Google Scholar).

8 The evolutionary model of rule development, and the conditions under which evolved standards are superior, is sketched out in Hayek, F. A., Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. I: Rules and Order (Chicago, 1973)Google Scholar. The model is applied to science in two excellent works: Polanyi, Michael, Personal Knowledge (Chicago, 1962Google Scholar), and Toulmin, Stephen, Human Understanding, Vol. I: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (Princeton, 1972Google Scholar).

9 The most comprehensive review of cliometrics is McCloskey, Donald, “The Achievements of the Cliometric School,” this Journal, 38 (March 1978), 13–28Google Scholar.

10 A critique of the extension of this work to institutions can be found in Field, Alexander, “On the Explanation of Rules Using Rational Choice Models,” Journal of Economic Issues, 13 (March 1979), 49–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It seems to me that Field wants to go too far in rejecting such explanations on purely a priori grounds; the problem isn't that such explanations are totally worthless, but that they tell only part of the story.

11 A case study of the Washington fishery finds, for example, that it makes a negative contribution to state income because it uses inefficient techniques; see Robert Higgs, “Legally Induced Technical Regress in the Washington Salmon Fishery,” in Paul Uselding, ed., Research in Economic History, Vol. 6 (Greenwich, Conn., forthcoming).

12 See Scitovsky, Tibor, The Joyless Economy (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar; Hirschman, Albert, Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar; and Peter Temin, “Modes of Economic Behavior,” MIT Dept. of Economics Working Papers No. 235, 1979 (mimeo.).

13 Oliver Williamson tries to tie together various partial explanations for organizational behavior in his Markets and Hierarchies (New York, 1975Google Scholar).

14 See Rosenberg, Nathan, Perspectives on Technology (Cambridge, 1976CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

15 See Easterlin, Richard, “Population Issues in American History: A Survey and Critique,” in Gallman, Robert, ed., Recent Developments in the Study of Business and Economic History (Greenwich, Conn., 1977), pp. 131–58Google Scholar.

16 The influence of ethnicity on economic behavior illustrates the need for a blending of economic and non-economic analyses. Puzzles about why different groups perform as they do are raised in Sowell, Thomas, Race and Economics (New York, 1975Google Scholar). An interesting account of how relative price changes affected contractual arrangements, which in turn altered the social relations of southern whites and blacks, is found in Alston, Lee, “Costs of Contracting and the Decline of Tenancy in the South, 1930–1960” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Washington, 1978), pp. 69–78Google Scholar. This shows what sort of work is possible.

17 Knight, Frank, “Institutionalism and Empiricism in Economics,” American Economic Review, 42 (May 1952), 54–55Google Scholar.