Mark Blaug’s normative methodology of economics is an attempt to articulate certain intuitions about how economic science could be improved by making it more “realistic”. I discuss two such articulations, one in terms of falsificationist principles, the other in terms of an alleged trade-off between relevance and mathematical rigour. My conclusion is that Blaug’s methodology is itself unrealistic, both descriptively and normatively. His (well intended) methodological prescriptions for the improvement of economics are not based on a systematic, consistent, descriptively adequate, (...) and normatively viable account. I suggest that Blaug’s intuitions can be developed into a more realistic account by incorporating the analysis of two further topics: economic modelling and the institutions of academic research. (shrink)

Rosenberg argues that economists have embraced the methodology of scientific research programs, and the writings of Imre Lakatos, at the same time that philosophers have been abandoning that approach. According to Rosenberg, the methodology of scientific research programs appears to allow some work in economics, which is neither tested nor testable, to be “scientific” nonetheless. That is, MSRP justifies some current practices which look hard to justify on strict falsificationist, or dogmatic positivist, grounds.

Weintraub is not really interested in whether economics is “science” or not. “Economists are not so unsophisticated as to think that calling economics a ‘science’ says anything about what economists do or should do”. But can it really be a matter of indifference to him whether the subject has the character of chemistry as opposed to literary criticism?