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CAUSALITY and DETERMINISM IN ECONOMICS
Author(s) -
Drakopoulos Stavros A.,
Torrance Thomas S.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
scottish journal of political economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.4
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1467-9485
pISSN - 0036-9292
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9485.1994.tb01119.x
Subject(s) - causality (physics) , causation , schools of economic thought , technological determinism , interpretation (philosophy) , positive economics , sociology , philosophy , economics , epistemology , neoclassical economics , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics
A great deal of recent methodological discussion in economics and econometrics has been dominated by the question of the appropriate role of the concepts of causality and determinism. This paper traces the evolution of these two notions in recent economics literature, and seeks to appraise the current range of professional opinion. Positively, the paper argues that since developments in twentieth-century microphysics have largely discredited the old deterministic paradigm within the physical sciences, the persistence of this paradigm in the social sciences must be viewed as scientifically untenable. Within economics, causality should be understood in the context of open systems and of inherently probabilistic explanations. Copyright 1994 by Scottish Economic Society.