The Scientific Method in Economics

We look at the main conceptions of the philosophy of science in Popper, Kuhn and Lakatos. Excluded from analysis are Laudan, and Feyerabend’s anarchist theory of science, approaches based on Bayes’ theorem to calculated probability and new experimentalism. The social science that is economics has branched in two directions, formalism, and empiricism, and that has opened an insurmountable rift between the economists from either school. Both formalist-theoretical and empiricist theoreticians are legitimate because, to paraphrase Kant, formalist economic thought without content (that is, without empiricism) is empty, while empiricist economic thought without concepts (or formal theories with mathematical models based on logic) is blind. The market for economic research publications like JCR and SJR is self-referential and oriented to the interests of academics, not to those of economists.