Economists seldom make explicit use of functional explanation, although they sometimes use it implicitly. Functional theorising has lost favour among social scientists in recent years, and few are now willing to adopt functional language. This paper argues that, despite some drawbacks, explicit...

Economic methodology has mostly adhered to naturalism, whereby the social sciences are akin to natural sciences and adopt the same positivistic methods. Anti-naturalism, by contrast, asserts that the social sciences are different from natural sciences and need to develop their own methods...

Dualism - the division of an object of study into separate, paired elements - is widespread in economic and social theorising: key examples are the divisions between agency and structure, the individual and society, mind and body, values and facts, and knowledge and practice. In recent years,...

Pluralism is frequently supported by heterodox economists, but their rationale for it is not always transparent. It could be advocated for strategic reasons, as a response to the institutional power of orthodoxy, or for fundamental reasons, as a programme for how economics should best be done....