Time and Causality in the Economic Process – a Critical Approach Based on Consistency Criteria

• Main Authors: Cristina TĂNĂSESCU, Vasile BRĂTIAN, Camelia OPREAN
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: General Association of Economists from Romania 2011-01-01
• Series: Theoretical and Applied Economics
• Subjects: economic process; economic time; final cause.
• Online Access: http://www.ectap.ro/articole/543.pdf

Our paper proposes a critical analysis based on criteria of consistency of the fundamental concepts underlying the comprehensive description of economic process, namely: time, context and causality. Issues of such action taken by us arise from the existence of the fact that the emergence of new paradigms, amid an economic complexity, should include elements of theoretical, instrumental and methodological nature. Moreover, dominant economic science, at this time (positivist), is subject to an epistemological imperialism exercised by Newtonian mechanics, without one's own epistemology. Regarding the underlying causality explaining the economic process, we find that, yet at this time, it is a singular and efficient one (in the Aristotelian sense), but not a teleological one, so we wonder whether the final causality (purpose form) may better explain the economic process and his completeness, and in this sense, the shaping of new paradigms based on premises other than those already existed, in understanding the economic process.