The influence of ideas is a central but puzzling problem in the social sciences. Parsons insisted that ideas play a central role in social continuity as well as in social change. Basic ideas that organise experience become embedded in the public mind and structure the ways in which issues are...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the “Radical economics” issue in International Journal of Social Economics. Design/methodology/approach – “Radical economics” has two basic meanings. One employs the basic sense of “radical”, whatever goes to the roots of the...

The fragmentation of knowledge poses serious threats to a survival when scientific and technological know-how constantly outrun understanding of societies and individuals. A significant problem associated with this state of affairs is the unquestioned separation of facts and values. This paper...

Communication systems are structured by economic forces which use them to optimise sales, and politicians who increasingly live by slogans and repeated sound bites. Both want people to act without much reflection, and may threaten to turn human beings into imitiations of the computers they use....

The fragmentation of knowledge poses serious threats to a survival when scientific and technological know‐how constantly outrun understanding of societies and individuals. A significant problem associated with this state of affairs is the unquestioned separation of facts and values. This paper...

The influence of ideas is a central but puzzling problem in the social sciences. Parsons insisted that ideas play a central role in social continuity as well as in social change. Basic ideas that organise experience become embedded in the public mind and structure the ways in which issues are...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the “Radical economics” issue in International Journal of Social Economics . Design/methodology/approach – “Radical economics” has two basic meanings. One employs the basic sense of “radical”, whatever goes to the roots of the...

A human life seems to have infinite value, and morality appears to demand that no effort be spared to preserve or to maintain it. Yet health care costs could destroy the economy if all available knowledge was applied to every person on the globe. There is no guaranteed solution, but this paper...