Relation of Carl Menger's philosophy of economics to Auguste Comte's positivism

Abstract

The conception of the founder of the Austrian School in his book on the philosophy of social sciences has been described by the supporters of this school as a total methodological individualism, upholding the absolute specificity of these sciences to those of nature, and as rejecting the use of mathematics in economics. On the contrary, we shall see that for Carl Menger the human individual was only the fundamental element of socio-economic structures, not reducible to it. Economic theory was to be inspired by the 'atomism' of natural sciences and determine the causes, effects, and laws of the studied phenomena, with the aim of predicting and controlling them. Empirical study had to unite with conceptual abstraction and mathematics in the degree determined by the simplicity or complexity of the field of research. These characteristics of C. Manger's conception, like others, make us assume an important (but unconfessed) influence of A. Comte's positivism. However, in order to prove it, we will try to restore his true philosophy of science, warped by the neo-positivism of the energeticist scientists and of the Vienna Circle.