Made with Words

Abstract

The natural sciences study objects; the social sciences are concerned with events. Objects have properties, events are the products of human intentionality. Modern economics is built on the assumption that events can be transformed by a process of abstraction into things with properties of the sort that permits the formulation of law-like generalities. These assumptions have resulted in the paradigm of the value-free economic agent. This paper rejects this paradigm and defends the claim that the domestication of the methodology of the natural sciences in economics is a category mistake. Instead, economics should develop a methodology that is proper to its subject.