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Moving beyond the conundrum of explanation, usually portrayed as a trade-off against accuracy, this article traces the recent emergence of explainable AI to the legal “right to an explanation”, situating the need for an explanation in the underlying rule of law principle of contestability. Instead of going down the rabbit hole of causal or logical explanations, the article then revisits the Methodenstreit, whose outcome has resulted in the quantifiability of anything and everything, thus hiding the qualification that necessarily precedes any and all quantification. Finally, the paper proposes to use the quantification that is inherent in machine learning to identify individual decisions that resist quantification and require situated inquiry and qualitative research. For this, the paper explores Clifford Geertz’s notion of explication as a conceptual tool focused on discernment and judgment rather than calculation and reckoning.

In this paper we contextualize Carl Menger's work in relation to the transformations of German political economy from the 1860s to the 1890s. We demonstrate that his Grundsätze (1871) was a culmination of the German subjectivist tradition which had started in the early nineteenth century. Menger's synthesis of this tradition is comparable to Adam Smith's synthesis of earlier knowledge in the Wealth of Nations (1776). Menger's contribution was continuous with the intellectual project of leading German economists, such as Wilhelm Roscher, to whom Menger had dedicated his book. Roscher, however, also promoted a historical turn, that was combined with a progressive policy agenda by a new generation of German economists after they founded the Verein für Socialpolitik in 1872. These divergent Roscherian legacies clashed vehemently in the Methodenstreit. During this debate Menger elaborated in his Untersuchungen (1883) an evolutionary and spontaneous theory of institutional change, in line with the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment and in contrast to a more rationalist and constructivist theory of institutional change expounded by Gustav Schmoller and other Verein economists. The new policy-oriented direction of German political economy carried the day, also due the fundamental socio-economic transformations in the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and prompted Menger to restate in 1891 the social policy agenda of the classical political economists, most prominently Smith. Menger's recurrent proximities to Smithian political economy – in the synthetic contribution of 1871, the theoretical innovation of 1883, and the policy agenda of 1891 – suggest that his arguments are best understood as a defense of what Boettke has called the "mainline" in economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Due to the famous methodenstreit it is often well argued that Menger’s approach to social sciences can be seen as anti-historical, as according to him pure empirical studies are insufficient to establish a firm economic theory. By suggesting that some theorems have to precede historical studies, Menger may be seen as a representative of the a priori tradition in scientific method. The modern method in the mainstream of economic thinking is also to a large extent anti-historical and a priori, but because of its lack of realism and extensive reliance on very limiting assumptions. The main strength of the Mengerian anti-historical approach is lesser faith in imaginary constructs, implying a higher degree of realism in theorizing.

El propósito de este trabajo es analizar la controversia sobre el método de las ciencias sociales que ocurrió en Alemania a partir de 1883, conocida como «la disputa del método» o Methodenstreit, y en Francia desde 1903, en torno al estatus científico de la historia. Estos episodios sirven como ejemplos para responder a la pregunta de cómo avanza epistemológicamente el conocimiento científico.

This paper explores Max Weber's intellectual relationship to the first generations of the Austrian School. Challenging his portrayal as a one-sided historicist, the paper reconstructs Weber's intense involvement with the Viennese economists from the 1890s to his passing in 1920 and his efforts to overcome the fronts left behind by the Methodenstreit. Section 2 discusses a number of necessary conditions for declaring a scholarly community a "school". Section 3 systematizes the multiple biographical connections, especially Weber's nexus to Friedrich von Wieser and Joseph Schumpeter. Section 4 focuses on the research program of Social Economics during the first decades of the twentieth century as the "irenic formula" for the post-Methodenstreit hostilities. Within Social Economics, economic sociology constitutes an "intermediary" layer between economic theory and economic history, addressing the institutional properties of the framework surrounding the processes of human action and exchange. Depending on the relative importance and qualifying power of economic sociology vis-à-vis economic theory, the paper distinguishes two varieties of Social Economics, a "universalist" and an "institutionalist" one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the last decade or so, political philosophers have undergone intense disagreement over the proper methodology of political philosophy. This paper contributes to and tries to move past this debate by offering a new way of thinking about what it is political philosophers are trying to do. Instead of being either ideal or non-ideal theorists, political philosophers can orient themselves east of Eden or west of Babel. After examining different possible research projects, I argue that the most promising route forward for political philosophers is theorizing that is non-ideal and west of Babel. The paper ends by articulating what such a research program might look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we analyze the basic theoretical assumptions of participants in the Methodenstreit dispute. The opposing views of positivists and historists have been analyzed according to the key positivist rules set out by Kolakowski (1972): phenomenalism, nominalism, status of value judgements and unity of science. In particular, the main consequences of different understandings of the relationship between the methods of the natural and social sciences were discussed: a) understanding of the goal of the social sciences: comprehension and explanation, b) the possibility of discovering universal laws as opposed to contextual analysis of unique phenomena; c) the place of social sciences in the system of sciences. We point to the efforts of the representatives of both directions to affirm the knowledge possibilities of the social sciences, but with different perceptions of the direction of the development of the social sciences - towards conquering the external or internal world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amish and plain Anabaptist economic research has focused either on the religious ethic in the tradition of Weber—religious convictions drive economic behavior—or the ethnic resources model—resources are mobilized to entrepreneurship. Both approaches (1) neglect the greater market context within which the plain Anabaptists have been embedded since the Early Modern Period, and (2) focus primarily on either early Anabaptism or the late 1900s. This article presents New Institutional Economics Theory as an alternative paradigm which understands people's economic behavior by the institutional contexts they are in. It looks at the World War II economy in the United States when many Anabaptist COs applied to be deferred to farm work by arguing that such work is of national importance. It shows that the Amish were thoroughly involved in the modern economy in the 1940s, as Walter Kollmorgen suggests. The Amish also shifted their institutional rules (the Ordnung) in response to larger institutional changes (e.g. wartime America). New Institutional Theory can help scholars better understand how Amish engage in, are shaped by, and shape the larger market.

The concept of Methodenstreits is used to analyse the relationship between behavioral and mainstream economics. A Methodenstreit is understood by the authors as a dispute between the more abstract and the less abstract canons of the economic science. It undergoes several necessary stages: discovery of a new research instrument, an exaggerated debate between the canons, and mutual enrichement after the debate. The article reviews the following Methodenstreits: empirical investigations of Hall, Hitch, and Lester vs neoclassical theory of the firm (the 'full cost controversy' and the 'marginalist controversy'); Katona's consumer research vs Keynesian macroeconomics; Simon's bounded rationality approach vs neoclassical maximization; and experiments of Allais and others vs expected utility theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friedrich Hayek’s Inaugural Address at the London School of Economics (LSE), ‘The Trend of Economic Thinking’ (1 March 1933), has been recognized as of particular importance for the understanding of his work. In it, Hayek argues that economics has a key role of showing what we cannot achieve: of showing that some attractive ideals are utopian. In developing this theme, Hayek referred to Mises’ arguments about the problems of economic calculation under socialism; but the idea - which I suggest might be seen as a theory about the structural constraints imposed by a flourishing market economy - becomes a more general motif in Hayek’s work. In the lecture, Hayek’s ideas are developed through engagement with the younger German Historical School of economics, which is criticized for espousing methodological ideas that would call the idea of such constraints into question. In this article, I suggest that there were also local targets at the LSE. I discuss the way in which William Beveridge, the Director of the LSE, and Lancelot Hogben, who held a Chair in Social Biology there, were engaged in an extended empiricist critique of the methodological ideas of the LSE economists and of theoretical economists more generally in ways close to the younger German historical school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes to reconsider the methodology and history of economics radically, whether present day mainstream or heterodox versions of it. The profession of economists must definitely abandon Cartesian dualism and adopt Vygotskian constructivism. In fact constructivist economics already existed in the past and was cognitively very successful and socially very useful. It was the economics of Gustav Schmoller’s historico-ethical school and the institutionalist economics of John R. Commons, traditions of which are totally ignored by the contemporary community of economists. The former tradition was based on Dilthey’s hermeneutics and the latter on Peirce’s pragmatism. It is worth to underline that hermeneutics and pragmatism are both predecessors of Vygotskian constructivism. During the last two decades a lot was written by economists on pragmatist, constructivist and discursive approaches to the methodology and history of economics, but those who wrote on these topics viewed them from the dualistic point of view. My paper is an appeal to economists to reconsider Methodenstreit. The dispute of methods between Schmoller and Menger can be considered as a repetition of a similar dispute taking place more than two hundred years earlier between Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes. Schmoller-Menger dispute started soon after the beginning of the institutionalisation of experimentally-oriented economics which happened with the creation in 1873 of the Vereinfür Sozialpolitik. Boyle-Hobbes dispute started in 1660, when the Royal Society of London had been founded, the cradle of the institution of science. Schmoller was one of the creators of the Verein, and Boyle was one of the founders of the Royal Society. The activities of both societies were similar in several respects: they represented efforts to collect data, working out of detailed reports and collective evaluation of obtained results. For Hobbes, as for Menger, the model of ‘science’ was geometry. Boyle and Schmoller privileged collecting and analysing data. Boyle did win the dispute, Schmoller did loose. It happened because of different attitudes of powerful groups in societies towards natural scientific experimental research and experimental social research. They were interested in the former, and they saw much more danger than benefit for them in the latter. On the contrary, they were interested in abstract theoretical constructions justifying the market vision of society and laissez-faire. This kind of constructions corresponded to deeply enrooted scholastic traditions of European universities to teach theology and linked with it philosophy. In the framework of these traditions, mathematics was considered as a summit of the scientific approach. On the one hand, the adoption of constructivism by economists would turn their discipline into a science functionally close to natural sciences. On the other hand the Vygotskian constructivism, as a social and political philosophy, once accepted by economists, may lead them to become preachers of the communitarian liberalism with its emphasis on social responsibility, deliberative democracy, and discourse ethics.

In den Werken und in den veröffentlichten Briefen von Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883–1950) und Walter Eucken (1891–1950) finden wir nur wenige Bezüge auf das Werk des jeweils anderen. Es scheint, als ob Eucken und Schumpeter kaum Notiz voneinander nahmen. In seinem späten, postum herausgegebenen Werk „Grundsätze der Wirtschaftspolitik" kritisiert Eucken Schumpeter scharf. Wir edieren und kommentieren in unserem Beitrag 16 Briefe von Schumpeter aus dem Nachlass von Walter Eucken. Diese Briefe zeigen eine enge wissenschaftliche und persönliche Beziehung zwischen den beiden Ökonomen zwischen 1926 und 1933 und belegen, dass Eucken Ende der 1920er Jahre wichtige Elemente von Schumpeters Entwicklungstheorie aufgriff. In the writings and published correspondence of Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883–1950) and Walter Eucken (1891–1950) we find only few references to the work of the other. As it seems Eucken and Schumpeter did not take notice of the other. In his late, posthumously published work "Grundsätze der Wirtschaftspolitik" Eucken criticizes Schumpeter's views sharply. In our paper we publish and comment 15 letters from Schumpeter to Eucken and one to Karl Diehl (1864–1943), Eucken's colleague at Freiburg University. All these letters show a close scientific and personal relationship between the two scholars from 1926 to 1933 and prove that Eucken picked up some elements of Schumpeter's theory of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revue d'Histoire de la Pensée Économique is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article challenges Tony Lawson's claim ( Lawson, 2016) that his ontology of money as the 'social positioning' of 'prior value' is more sustainable than prominent existing theories and is able therefore to reconcile their putative incompatibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hispania: Revista Española de Historia is the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

I assess Deirdre McCloskey's three volumes on the bourgeois revaluation and the making of the modern world, situating her contribution within a broader historical concern for ideas and context. In this regard, she is still seen to be making an essentially Weberian argument that revives aspects of an earlier German historicist tradition, but in a fashion that remains consistent with an Austrian understanding of economic processes and purposefulness. I find that she has not so much refuted the importance of institutions, technology, and science as placed each in its proper causal relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Max Weber's position with regard to the Methodenstreit, the dispute between the Austrians and the historical school over the status of axiomatic-deductive theory within economics, is investigated. I find that while there was much in Carl Menger's economics with which Weber agreed, his achievement was to provide an improved foundation for the historicist approach. I discuss the important differences between Weber's approach and the methodology advocated by Ludwig von Mises, the central figure in the later Austrian school. I argue that Weber broadened the scope for economics by integrating the empirical facts of history and the contemporary world, while Mises narrowed it by attempting to establish an economics purified of contingent empirical reality. Finally, I discuss Mises' influence on Lionel Robbins and Robbins' contribution to the eclipse of Weber's methodological insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]