Économie, droit et histoire : le Methodenstreit, plus qu’une « querelle des méthodes »
In economics, the Methodenstreit (“method conflict”) is often described as a mere dispute between deductive and inductive reasonings, and between theory and history. We shed a new light on the epistemological, methodological and analytical principles at stake in the Methodenstreit. We present the pu...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Association d'Economie Politique
2020-12-01
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| Series: | Interventions Économiques pour une Alternative Sociale |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/interventionseconomiques/12083 |
| Summary: | In economics, the Methodenstreit (“method conflict”) is often described as a mere dispute between deductive and inductive reasonings, and between theory and history. We shed a new light on the epistemological, methodological and analytical principles at stake in the Methodenstreit. We present the pure theory of economy developed by Carl Menger, one of the founders of neoclassical economic theory, and the socio-historical analysis of the economic formulated by Gustav Schmoller, leader of the young German historical school. We also discuss some of the influences exerted by these protagonists on science sciences, namely on Austrian economics, sociology and American institutionalism. We conclude that the Methodenstreit constitutes a conflict over the legitimacy of an autonomous science of economic phenomena, and over the epistemological foundations of the study of the economic. We highlight the need to pay attention to the Methodenstreit in order to question the role of natural law theory and history in social sciences. |
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| ISSN: | 0715-3570 1710-7377 |