Methodology of Economics and Other Social Sciences.

Abstract

This chapter discusses the work on a short biography of homo oeconomicus. The history of this idea is largely a history of misunderstandings and misinterpretations reflecting the course of the debate of the methodology of the social sciences. Analysis of human action with the aid of constructs isolating, idealizing, and exaggerating some human trait or function is needed both for historical and for theoretical investigation. The simultaneous or consecutive use of many separate ideal types is usually required in inquiries about particular persons, acting alone or in groups. In inquiries about events explainable as consequences of actions of anonymous persons, the interpreters can often do with a very small set of ideal types. The critics of classical economists derided them for their alleged failure to recognize that homo oeconomicus was a fiction and for their alleged naiveté in mistaking him for a true picture of reality. There is no essential difference in the construction of ideal types as common-sense concepts of ordinary people and as scientific concepts of the historian or social scientist, except that the concepts designed for scholarly investigation have to satisfy certain requirements of consistency and relevance—requirements that are usually not checked by the ordinary man in everyday life.