Economics, sociology, history: Notes on their loss of unity, their need for re-integration, and the current relevance of the controversy between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller

Abstract

We are experiencing a situation of increasing criticism of the state in which economics is being represented nowadays. One of the remarks is that economics has become too formalized and too abstract and that the state of discipline has become increasingly unable to express many phenomena of "real life" with its concrete socioeconomic manifestations. Criticism has found a way to get cumulated in different terms of economic pluralism. The claim for fostering interdisciplinary research, which we also find nowadays, reflects the diagnosis that our islands of shared knowledge have become too fragmented. When reflecting what is going on in recent times, a view back to the end of the nineteenth century may help to contextualize recent debate. Looking at the debate between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller, which was later classified as the first battles in social sciences, helps to sort up arguments which are still on the agenda, inductive versus deductive methods or empirism versus abstract theorizing.