Monism in modern science : the case of (micro-)economics

This elaboration starts by deciphering modern science as a social subsystem being loosely coupled to the rest of society (section 2.1). Additionally, the way in which modern (monistic) economics was generated within this subsystem will be sketched (section 2.2). This will be contrasted with the views that this monism would have been eroded in recent times due to imports from other sciences into economics. Conclusions as regards the necessity as well as the mode of pluralism will be drawn from this discussion (section 2.3). Picking up the disputable complexity reductions involved in the dominating (monistic) approach in economics other ways to deal with complexity inherent in the economy will be dealt with in section 3. Here a stepwise exit from the established standard approach in economics is suggested for the microeconomic syllabus consisting in the first step of an introductory pluralistic course and in the second step of a heterodox advanced course. Conclusions and perspectives resulting from such an approach are discussed in the final section.