A Meta-theoretical Assessment of the Decline of Scholastic Economics

Drakopoulos, Stavros A. and Gotsis, George (2003): A Meta-theoretical Assessment of the Decline of Scholastic Economics. Published in: History of Economics Review , Vol. 40, No. Summer 2004 (2004): pp. 19-45.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to offer certain insights into the process of declining of scholastic economics in late medieval and early modern European intellectual circles. In this attempt, the paper adopts the metatheoretical framework of Laudan’s philosophy of science and introduces the concept of scientific research tradition in pre-classical economic thought. It then considers the features of scholastic research tradition, specifies its empirical and conceptual problems and indicates a general scenario of assessing its performance over time. Of primary importance, in this respect, becomes the issue of evaluating the external and internal factors of disintegrating of the scholastic tradition, whose constraints reflect its incorporation into a broader ethical analysis and necessitate its transformation into a more secular approach to economic phenomena.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Laudan and Economics; Scholastic Economics; Research Traditions;economic ethics
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B1 - History of Economic Thought through 1925; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B4 - Economic Methodology

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