The Political Economy of Big Questions and Small Ones

Canadian Public Policy

The Political Economy of Big Questions and Small OnesAuthor(s): Scott GordonSource: Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter, 1975), pp. 97-106Published by: University of Toronto Press on behalf of Canadian Public PolicyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3549840 .

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The Political Economy of Big Questions and Small Ones*

SCOTT GORDON / Indiana University and Queen's University

The conception of man which underlies economic theory is a rational creature rather than a biological or sociological one. This is drawn from the even more fundamental conception of man as an individual. Modem economic theory is founded upon individualism not as a metaphysical principle but as a methodological one. The tools of economic analysis are powerful and are suitable to the answering of many important questions, but there are certain types of 'Big' questions which lie outside their scope as, in all likelihood, they lie outside the scope of scientific method generally.

La theorie 6conomique voit en l'homme un etre rationnel plut6t qu'une entit6 biologi- que ou sociale. Cette image de l'homme s'appuie sur une conception encore plus fondamentale, 'a savoir l'homme en tant qu'individu. C'est l'individualisme qui est a la base de la theorie economique modeme; individualisme non pas fond6 sur un principe

m6taphysique mais sur la m6thodologie. Aussi puissante que soient les outils de

l'analyse 6conomique pour r6soudre les problemes importants, il n'en demeure pas moins qu'il reste un genre de 'grandes' questions qui echappe a sa competence, et qui vrai semblablement ne releive pas du tout de la m6thode scientifique, en g6neral.

Having spent the last twenty years or so as an academic eclectic or dilettante, I now find that there is no subject on which I am able to be profound. When

'interdisciplinary research' became a popular cognomen a few years ago, I

thought for a while that it might be a flag under which one such as I might sail, but I could never understand what 'interdisciplinary' signified, so I decided to do what I was doing anyway, and continue to call it 'economics.' The reason

why the older term 'political economy' appears in the title of my paper will, I

hope, be clear as I proceed. Productive scholars in the various specialized sciences typically pay little

conscious attention to their methodology, or to the more general subject known as the 'philosophy of science.' There is good reason for this: much

Invited lecture delivered at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Economics Association in Toronto, June, 1974.

CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY-ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES, I: I

winter/hiver 1975 Printed in Canada/Imprime au Canada



98 / Scott Gordon

concern about one's methodology undermines the philosophical naivete that is an essential precondition of constructive and creative work. Philosophic doubt is a fine thing in a philosopher, but it is likely to turn a scientist into a drunkard. The methodologist's own chief foible is not the grape, but the gripe; he often becomes a scold, reprimanding the workmen of science for not being better than they are. It is no part of my intention to do this. Anyone who advances a general disparagement of the methodology that has found wide favour in a working science is quickly answered by the challenge that he do the thing better himself.

If then, I come not to bury Caesar nor to blame him, what then? Jacob Viner once remarked that 'economics is what economists do,' to which Samuel Johnson would have added, 'and there's an end on't.' But, for the philosopher, what scientists do is more of a beginning than an end. The main point of my paper is that the science of economics is built upon methodological foundations which have important philosophical implications. What I want to do is to discuss some of these foundations which seem to me to be especially important if we are to understand not only what it is that economists do in a technical way but also the nature of the philosophical commitment that a modern economist enters into when he undertakes to study the condition of man as a social being by the methods which are established in our science.

The first of these basic methodological principles that must engage our attention is the economist's conception of the nature of man, or, more accu- rately, the conception of man which the economist employs for the pragmatic purpose of constructing a coherent and operational theory of economic society.' The 'economic man' of this theoretical construction is, most fundamentally, a creature of reason. Viewed as a biological organism, man may be conceived, like other organisms, as a creature of primal 'drives' - for food, shelter, security, and procreation - but the economist takes him up at an evolutionary stage that is considerably beyond this primordial state; the primal drives are not absent, but they are greatly attenuated in a way of life that is characterized by rational calculation, which is applied not only to the material concerns of existence and continuation, but also to the peculiarly human problems of ethical and moral valuation.

The rational character of man, as a fundamental methodological postulate of economic theory, is apparent in any modern textbook on the subject and it could be amply illustrated from such sources, most explicitly from the 'micro-economic' analysis of firms and households, and of the markets which connect them together. This is not an examination of the 'behaviour' of firms and households in any sociological or psychological sense. It is rather an analysis of the logic of their actions as rational beings; how they must behave if they are to maximize some objective, such as profit or utility. The specific tools of modern microeconomics have been developed from the marginal analysis which was not firmly established in economic theory until the end of the nineteenth century, but the basic postulate of rationality has a much older tradition in western social thought.

I This section is adapted from my paper on 'Alfred Marshall and The Development of Economics as a Science' in Giere and Westfall (1973).



Political Economy of Big Questions /99

This concept of man as a rational being is a philosophical principle of great significance in itself, but it also contains an implication that is of exceptional importance in the methodology of economic theory. Human rationality is a characteristic of man as an individual. Economic theory of a systematic sort is a nineteenth century creation, but its metaphysical foundation (if I dare use a term which may be grossly misunderstood) are to be found in the seventeenth century, in the thought of Rene Descartes and John Locke. Descartes established the great principle of mechanism, which is the foundation of all modem scientific thought, but he also established the great principle of individualism without which economists could not have followed physi- cists in creating a modem science of social phenomena. In opening his Discourse on Method (1637) Descartes announces his intention to doubt all things, even the evidence of the senses. There is one thing, however, which cannot be doubted - one's own personal existence as an individual, thinking being. On this rock an edifice of secure knowledge may be erected. Similarly, John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689) asks whether there is any firm ground upon which one may build a philosophy of politics, and finds it in the indubitable natural right a man has to his own person. Thus we find both the epistemology of knowledge and the ethical first principles of politics established in the seventeenth century, upon the same individualistic foundation. Economic theory, as it was developed by the utilitarians of the early nineteenth century, anchored itself firmly to the same rock.

Man is undeniably a social animal; he lives in communities, and, without significant exception, is always found associating in social groups of various sorts; but only the single individual is a reasoning entity. No social collectiv- ity, as such, can be said to possess rational capacity or to engage in anything that may be validly described as 'thought.' Economic theory carries this point further: only the single individual can be said to have wants or desires, or to act, or to make value judgments. In common speech we often represent social collectivities as if they were primary entities; we speak of 'the United States' as blockading the harbour of Haiphong, or the 'working class' as wanting a larger share of the national income, or 'the Catholic Church' as judging abortion to be immoral. Such modes of expression are linguistically and analytically convenient, but when we use them, we are speaking elliptically and, if we are careful, we do not regard them as more than short-hand representations of the reality of human life.

Any reader of the classical economists will appreciate the extent to which they pictured society as composed of distinct socio-economic classes, or 'orders of men' in Adam Smith's eighteenth century phrase. In the history of political economy the concept of class has been of great importance, and difference of view on this point is one of the main elements which distinguishes modern orthodox economics from Marxian economics, both of which developed from the same classical stem. The crucial issue is whether classes are to be regarded as collections of individuals, or whether individuals are to be regarded as representatives of classes. Which of the two are the primary entities in society? Do social classes have autonomous existence as organisms or some other type of entities in themselves, or are they simply the categories of some empirical or pragmatic classification of men? If it can be demon- strated that 'workers' and 'capitalists' differ in some respect, do they differ



Ioo / Scott Gordon

because their members are workers and capitalists; or do we classify them as workers and capitalists because they differ? Are the members of a particular social class relatively uniform in their economic behaviour because the component individuals are operating under similar conditions and constraints and therefore, on account of their rationality, arrive at similar individual decisions for action, or is the behaviour uniform because it is the social class, in itself, which is the basic operating entity and the actions of its component individuals are derivative therefrom?

Marxian theory and orthodox economics take opposite views on this important question. To Marx, the classes are the primary entities of society, and it is the interaction of these entities which is the essence of economic processes. The laws of historical evolution which Marx attempted to de- lineate, pertain to a world in which individual men act out roles which are largely prescribed for them by the classes of which they are members. In the preface to Das Kapital, Marx wrote that in his analysis 'individuals are dealt with only insofar as they are personifications of economic categories, em- bodyments of particular class-relations and class-interests.' The analytical model of capitalism which Marx employed in his economic theory is very similar to that of Ricardo and the other early classical economists, but in its conception of man it is fundamentally different. The philosophical significance of the Smithian concept of 'economic man' is that it asserts the primacy of the individual. The classical economists, like all social observers of their time, regarded society as composed of classes and much of their analysis ran in terms of class behaviour and relationships; nevertheless, the fundamental view of economic processes which they held was that these events result from the actions of men as individuals. This view was adopted, in turn, by the orthodox successors of the classical school and has persisted as a fundamental feature of economic theory down to the present day.

The concept of 'economic man' therefore, reflects an important methodological principle, without which it is impossible to conceive of economic theory in its modern configuration - the principle of 'methodological individualism.' It asserts that any analysis of economic phenomena, to be satisfactory, must trace the phenomena back to the actions of individuals, whose decisions of action are presumed to be rational in the sense that they are aimed at specific and stable objectives and involve an appreciation of the real connections that exist between means and ends. To be sure, there is today recognition of the existence of important institutional entities which act as decision-making centers - notably firms, and governments - but the 'economic point of view' concerning them has been to resist explanations of their behaviour which run in sociological, social-psychological, or political- philosophical terms, in favour of explanations which view their collective activity as a proxy for, or a reflection of, the rational and autonomous economic behaviour of their component individuals. The methodological foundations of modern economics in this respect bear historical witness to the early nineteenth century British origins of the science, and to the intimate connection of economic theory with the philosophy of utilitarianism, which, in the history of philosophical thought, is the prime exemplar of the doctrine of individualism.



Political Economy of Big Questions / Io0

This fundamental feature of economic theory was badly masked by Malthus' Essay on Population (1798) which many nineteenth-century writers took as a prototype of economic thinking in general. Malthus opened his argument by asserting two 'postulata,' which he meant to be taken as fixed 'laws of nature': that man must eat; and, with equal necessity, must give vent to the 'passion between the sexes,' and therefore will procreate up to some exogenous constraint. Malthus' man is not a creature of will and choice (at least in the first edition of the Essay); he is, in fact, simply a gastro-intestinal tract and a reproductive system which operate according to natural neces- sities. Many nineteenth century interpreters of economics viewed the Smithian conception of economic man as only a slightly enlarged version of Malthus' food and sex machine, but this was a fundamental misinterpretation.

The central issue is, of course, that of determinism. Without entering upon a discussion of that old and insoluble philosophical puzzle, it is necessary to note that the mainstream of nineteenth century economic theory was a rejec- tion of determinism. This was the real meaning of the concept of economic man as I have tried to indicate, and it was also the implication of another fundamental assumption of economic theory (which was equally an object of much misunderstanding): the conception of the economic world as inherently one of scarcity. This is not the same thing as saying that it is inherently one of poverty, which is what the strict form of the Malthusian argument amounted to. The real import of scarcity is that human existence is infused with the necessity of making choices. Scarcity and choice go inextricably together, and choice necessarily involves three conditions: having ends; being able to relate means to them in a rational and empirical way; and being free to act on the connections perceived. Paradoxically, man is unfree at both extremes of the economic spectrum - when his life is so poor that all he can do is live on the edge of subsistence (i.e., a Malthusian-type world), and when there is such great plenty that no choices are necessary (i.e., in 'heaven').2

The theories and constructs of a science are utilitarian artifacts. They exist in the mind rather than in nature, and though we may sometimes speak of 'discovering' them, it is more true to say that we 'invent' them. Economic theory, then, is an intellectual tool. It is of great philosophical importance that one should recognize that all tools are specialized to some degree. A tool is designed for a particular purpose, and it may serve this (and some other) purposes well, but for others it may be clumsy, or not useful at all. This does not imply that there is a rigid one-to-one relationship between tasks and tools. It is almost a commonplace in the history of science that analytical tools invented for one purpose may turn out to be highly useful for others. Some of them indeed, become very versatile instruments. Newton and Leibnitz invented calculus in order to solve some problems in physics, but the instru- ment is today applied almost as widely as arithmetic. Probability theory was originally developed as a tool for gambling, but it is now the foundation of the

2 Actually, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to conceive of such a state, even without any material constraints. For there to be no necessity of choice, time would have to be unlimited as well as material goods, and this would require that each individual's command of time was infinite not only in extent but also, in some sense, in 'depth' so that, if one wished, more than one enjoyable thing could be done simultaneously.



102 / Scott Gordon

statistical methods in use by almost all branches of science both pure and applied. The market model of economic theory has achieved a wide versatility in economics itself and has also been applied with some effect to problems in political science, criminology, ethical philosophy, and biology. Nevertheless, no analytical tool possesses universal versatility, even within the delimited confines of a particular subject such as economics.

It is of great importance also to realize that the relationship between the tools and tasks of a science does not run solely in one direction. Scientists construct analytical tools to assist in the performance of certain tasks but it is also true that the tasks they set for themselves may be determined, or at least constrained, by the nature of the tools which they possess. A good scientist asks those questions which he has a reasonable prospect of being able to answer. He invents and develops tools for the purpose of inquiry, but he also limits his inquiry to the scope that his tools can cover. Necessity, it has been observed, is the mother of invention - which, like most aphorisms, is only a half-truth; the other half is that invention is the mother of necessity. We invent to serve our needs, but the needs we feel are in considerable part derivative from our inventions. At any reate, most economists, like other practising scientists, are limited by the kit of tools that is already available. The creation of a really new tool of analysis is an act of genius, and the supply of genius is very small. Most of us are tool users, or at best, tool adapters, and the scope of our inquiry is confined to asking the kinds of questions which we have the means in hand to answer.

The important implication of this is that there are certain questions which, however interesting they may be, do not lie within the domain of the answerable; or, more correctly, they are not answerable by any scientific tools we now possess or have any reasonable prospect of developing. In making such a deflating statement I have particularly in mind what can be described as Big Questions, such as: What is the destiny of man? Where is civilization going? What are the laws of history? Karl Popper has argued (Popper, 1957) that such questions can be shown to be unanswerable in principle. I do not wish here to repeat his demonstration or to enter the discussion of the philosophical problem which it raises; but I am persuaded that Popper is essentially correct. The history of economic theory at any rate provides some considerable support for the view that Big Questions are unanswerable questions, and I want now to discuss this briefly.

When one examines the writings of any 'school' one soon discovers that the differences in the ideas of its members are at least as significant as the similarities, and one becomes somewhat disinclined to refer to them in collective terms. This reluctance becomes rather acute when we begin to consider the classical economists' interest in the sort of thing that I have called Big Questions. Certainly Adam Smith had a great interest in such matters, as anyone who reads beyond book I of the Wealth of Nations will appreciate; John Stuart Mill clearly felt that one of the main purposes of economic theory was to shed light in such directions; but one must adopt the methods of Procrustes to make David Ricardo fit the same bed. Some historians of economic thought have spoken of a Smith-Mill tradition as opposed to a




Ricardo tradition in order to reflect this difference of interest, but even two beds will hardly meet the diverse characteristics of the many writers who built up the apparatus of economic theory in the classical period.

The interest of some of the classical economists in these momentous Big Questions is not surprising when one considers the intellectual current of their time. They lived in a world that was very conscious of historical change, or more correctly, not merely change, but development, evolution, and prog- ress. Prior to the seventeenth century these were exotic concepts, but by Adam Smith's day they were common in intellectual circles, and by David Ricardo's they were nearly universal frames of thought. The industrial revolution not only increased man's power over nature but it upset long established social relationships and brought into being new forms of social power and authority. Coincidentally, the accepted image of the physical and natural world as a static state was being undermined, especially by geologists and biologists. In a world that was exposed to these momentous economic changes and scientific discoveries the efforts of the early economists to construct the first coherent models of the economy were much influenced by a general consciousness of the dynamics of history. After all, if it was permissible for philosophers, poets, and novelists to discourse upon the historical course of human civilization, why deny this to economists who might possess the tools that were appropriate to such a task? If natural science can penetrate the mysteries of the cosmos and lay bare the secrets of matter and energy, is it not possible that economic science may unravel the web of history and disclose its patterns and its laws?

It would distort the thought of the classical economists to deny that they entertained any such large intention, but it would be an equal distortion to interpret them as constructing an apparatus of economic analysis that was mainly concentrated upon such an aim. David Ricardo, who produced the coherent general model that we now describe as basic classical economics, would almost certainly have been embarrassed, and perhaps distressed, to find himself categorized as a philosopher of Big Questions. He began his public life with some comments upon the mundane issue of foreign exchange rates and throughout he remained mainly interested in matters of similarly small, though by no means unimportant, scope. More than one-third of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) was devoted to the analysis of the effects of different types of taxes, and much of the rest was aimed at other practical issues of a like sort. Ricardo's followers were similarly oriented. Some of them were not at all averse to public speculation on Big Questions, but, for the most part, they developed their economic theory for the analysis of small ones, and, in particular, to shed light on issues that were focal points of policy debate among the practical men of business and government in their age.

In sum then, the interest of the orthodox classical economists in such things as the law of diminishing returns as a law of history, the economic forces leading civilization towards a 'stationary state,' and the future of class relationships in economic evolution, while real, were only of secondary concern, perhaps no more than an intellectual flirtation with the philosophical



Io4 / Scott Gordon

temper of their times. The same cannot be said however of the last of the great economists of the classical period, Karl Marx. What others may have toyed with, he embraced with a fierce and total commitment.

This is evident even in Marx's early writings. The idea that human civilization evolves according to definite historical laws is the foundation of the Communist Manifesto which Marx wrote with Friedrich Engels in 1848, and one finds the same theme powerfully at play in other early works that were written before Marx embarked upon his study of economics. Marx called himself a 'scientific socialist' and sharply differentiated his mode of thought from all other types of socialism, which he labelled 'utopian'. What did he mean by this distinction? Unlike the utopian writers, Marx did not construct a 'model' of an ideal society. In all the thousands of pages of Marx's published and unpublished manuscripts there is hardly a suggestion of how a socialist or communist society should (or would) be organized. For the 'utopians' however (More, Owen, Fourier and others), the description of such a society was the main object. Marx regarded such efforts as meaningless because, in his view, men cannot make societies according to their dreams of ideality; the course of human civilization has no options; it unfolds according to laws of historical necessity. What Marx meant by 'scientific socialism' is a theory of historical change which shows that human civilization moves ineluctably through stages of economic and social evolution in which the stage of socialism follows necessarily from capitalism. If Darwin had consented to his request, Marx would have dedicated the first volume of Capital (1867) to him. Marx's desire to do so is significant. He did not admire Darwin for his social theory, nor for his views on capitalism or socialism, nor for his ideas concerning the history of civilization. On such matters Darwin said and probably thought, nothing; but he had achieved the feat of constructing a scientific theory of organic evolution. What Marx was attempting to construct was a scientific theory of social evolution; to find the laws of history just as Darwin had found the laws of species development.

Marx formed this intention early and he took up the study of economics in order to serve it. His fundamental intuition about history was that it was dominated by the 'material' forces of economic life, all other elements of human existence (such as religion, politics, morals, aesthetics, etc.) being subsidiary to or derivative from these basic forces. This being so, economic theory was the key to the discovery of the laws of history. In developing his economic model, Marx borrowed a great deal from the orthodox classical economists; in fact, except for the law of diminishing returns, which Marx did not use, and the Malthusian theory of population, which he violently rejected, the main elements and structure of Marx's economic theory are 'classical.' Moreover, as I have argued, the orthodox classical economists themselves entertained some intention to develop a scientific theory of historical evolution, but what distinguishes Marx is the single-minded intensity of this aim. For Marx, this was the task of economic theory. In the more than two thousand published pages which form the three primary volumes of Capital, Marx does not allow himself to be drawn away from this central purpose, and the issues (such as the distribution of income) that are integral to it, to any substantial degree. We do not find him applying his model to such things as the




analysis of taxes (as Ricardo did) or the determination of international com- modity values (as Mill did) or to any other issue, no matter how interesting in itself, that is not intimately connected with the question of the 'laws of motion of capitalism' conceived as an instance of the more general laws of history.

Unless one suffers from the tyranny of ideological faith, it is impossible to regard Marx as having achieved his aim. Real history has in fact been very unkind to Marx's theory of history, disagreeing with virtually all of its specific predictions. The reason for this is not that Marx's was an erroneous theory of history, for that would seem to imply that a correct one could be constructed. The truth of the matter is that a theory of history which aspires to do what Marx intended is not within the realm of intellectual possibility.

The main point of my story is that economic science consists of tools of analysis which, while highly useful, are restricted in scope and in particular, the analysis of Big Questions, is beyond our reach. Over the past century, since the development of 'neo-classical' theory, economists have come in- creasingly to recognize and to accept this. Marxian economists still concern themselves, upon occasion, with the Big Questions, but these are not to be found in the standard curriculum of orthodox economics. The main focus of economic theory is the solution of Robinson Crusoe's economic problem, for a world of many persons who are specialized in function, and engage in exchange. The key questions are the allocation of productive resources and the distribution of income, and with only minor exceptions, modern economic theory is aimed at these matters. The analysis of markets, welfare economics, international trade, public finance, and all the other main divisions of the orthodox curriculum, are aspects of applications of allocation and distribution theory. Even 'macro-economics', the study of fluctuations in aggregate economic activity, which seemed to undergo a revolutionary reorientation in the 1930's with the development of Keynesian economics, is now also recog- nized to be an aspect of the analysis of markets, and the study of economic development, after a quarter century of intense effort is now abandoning its search for any general laws.

In order to carry out their tasks, economists have developed a particular kit of tools, which has been generally categorized as 'marginal analysis.' In essence the analytical development of marginalism is simply the importation into economics of the technique of the calculus. Viewed pragmatically, this is no more than a tool, but it has profound implications for political economy. It gives a rather conservative cast to social policy, which articulates intimately with the liberal element that is inherent in methodological individualism. The calculus can be applied only where there is continuity; discontinuous func- tions cannot be differentiated, and discrete changes cannot be analyzed. Beyond this, there is the problem, which is at the heart of much controversy in social philosophy, of multiple maxima. The calculus can lead one to find a local maximum, within, or contiguous to, the range of one's experience, but it cannot, by itself, show that there may be another hill, with another, and perhaps higher, maximum in another location. The maximum maximorum cannot be discovered by the analysis of marginal increments. When the utopianist says that he envisages a society discretely different from ours at present that would be more happy and more just, and advocates a quantum



Io6 / Scott Gordon

leap to get there, there is no way in which the calculus device or marginalism can test his claim.

To maximize the social welfare by the assistance of marginalist economics, commits one therefore to a particular political philosophy - gradualism, experimentation with small and (if possible) reversible changes, empiricism. It eschews revolution, upheaval, and guidance by 'vision.' It recommends a prudential policy in which one looks before one leaps, and then leaps only a little bit at a time. It does not have the grand romantic appeal of a holistic panorama of the ideal state. It is a philosophy of improvement, not of perfection.

There seems to be something unavoidably pedestrian in this, and economists have paid the price of it in the form of a generally low repute as cautioners, nay-sayers, and earth-bound men, only a half-step above accoun- tants or dentists in the popular rank order. The temptation to try to advance one's image is strong, but it would, in my opinion, do ill-service to human welfare to give way to it and orient economic theory towards the Big Ques- tions. Much evil has been done in the past, and continues to be done, in the name of social perfection and/or historical necessity. One who discovers the formula for a 'perfect society' cannot refrain from pummelling people into shape to fit it. One who discovers a 'law of history' tries to force history to obey the law. Lord Acton said in an oft-quoted statement, that 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'; he would have been equally correct if he had observed that certainty about social phenomena also corrupts absolutely. Walter Bagehot once remarked that 'the discovery of a law of nature is very much like the discovery of a murder.'

Human history is full of the unexpected and this is no less true of the history of scientific thought. When Galileo spent many hours watching a ball roll down an inclined plane, one might have thought that he was engaged on an investigation so small as to be trivial, but it led to knowledge that was momentous. When Gregor Mendel tried to grow strange peas in the garden of his monastery, the cook might have sneered at him, but if the Pope had known what was about to happen he would have felt the earth tremble. When Ricardo and Mill asked themselves what determines the rate of exchange between English textiles and Portuguese wine they were embarked on an investigation of far greater significance than when they speculated upon the conditions that would bring about a stationary state. The message that I take from these and from the many similar cases in the history of science is that, as economists, we should not grieve nor fret that we spend our energies the way we do. The temple of knowledge is vast, and that of freedom and justice is larger still, with many doors that remain yet closed - but the keys are small.

REFERENCES

Giere, R.N. and R.S. Westfall eds. (I973) Foundations of Scientific Methods. The Nineteenth Century (Bloomington, Indiana University Press)

Popper, K.R. (1957) The Poverty ofHistoricism (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul)



The Political Economy of Big Questions and Small Ones

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