Beyond the History of Economics without Philosophical Foundations

Abstract

A mere chronological description or an exegesis of past major economists does not constitute the history of economics as a discipline of social science. Inspired by a provocative claim of Kozo Sugimura, I have been concerned with the philosophical foundations of the history of economics. Social science observes social reality and constructs theory, which, in turn, becomes an object of observation. Just as a social study, whether historical or theoretical, focuses on social reality and attempts to make a subjective construction of the reality, so a study of theories is merely a subjective construction of those theories because they are a part of social reality. An approach to the history of economics, whether an interpretation or a critique, is also either historical or theoretical, i. e., it is an historical or rational reconstruction of economic thought. In my view, just as economic theory comprises economic statics, economic dynamics, and economic sociology, so metatheory, which is a theory about theory, consists of the philosophy of science, the history of science, and the sociology of science. Thus the structures of theory and metatheory are parallel in the sense that in social science both society and the mind are analyzed at three levels: the static, the dynamic, and the social. Actually based on an examination of the work of Joseph Schumpeter, I have explored a metatheoretical perspective of social science and called this conception of social science a two-structure approach to the mind and society.