Abstract

This chapter discusses Joseph Schumpeters economic methodology. Schumpeter attempted reconciliation between the warring schools by emphasizing that no method can be universally good or bad and that one should abstain from claiming general validity or superiority for any method. He explained the existing antagonism between theorists and historians by the fact that description and theory call for different methods and appeal to persons of very different talents and natural turns of mind. The social sciences suffer from two deep-seated and pernicious ills: (1) from that almost childish narrow-mindedness that regards its own method of work as the only possible one, wishes to make it the universal one, and considers that one's foremost task is to annihilate all others in holy anger; (2) from that complete lack of even elementary knowledge of all branches of learning outside one's own. Schumpeter made this diagnosis of the state of the social sciences in a spirit of disgust over certain positivist criticisms of economic theory.

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