Once economics came to be understood as the scientific investigation of the operation of markets, economic theorists pushed ethical and metaphysical concerns outside their realm of study. After the separation, the claims of Christian theology had no more jurisdiction over the discipline of...

In this article, the author offers a discussion of the evidential role of the Galilean constant in the history of physics. The author argues that measurable constants help theories constrain data. Theories are engines for research, and this helps explain why the Duhem-Quine thesis does not...

The basis of this essay, which analyzes the use of mathematics in economics, is the supposed dilemma between axiomatics and empiricism. The proponents of formalist axiomatics hold that economic phenomena should be explored and expressed with the language of mathematics, because mathematics is a...

This chapter examines the nature of ethics and economics as a single subject of investigation, and uses a complex systems approach to characterize the nature of that subject. It then distinguishes mainstream economic and social economic visions of it, where the former assumes that market...

This paper uses a core-periphery distinction to characterize contemporary economics, economic methodology, and also today’s world economy. First, it applies the distinction to the organization of contemporary economics through an examination of the problem of explaining economics’ relations...

This paper extends behavioral economics' realist methodological critique of rational choice theory to include the type of logical reasoning underlying its axiomatic foundations. A purely realist critique ignores Kahneman's emphasis on how the theory's axiomatic foundations make it normative. I...

This paper examines how attribute substitution (AS), central to the psychology of choice and behavioral economic reasoning, can be understood when combined with counterfactual thinking (CFT), often called ‘what if’ or ‘if only’ thinking, and how their combination creates important...

This paper examines the relationship between poverty dynamics, causal pluralism, and mixed method research approaches. It reviews the nature and significance of the shift from the analysis of poverty status to poverty dynamics, discusses different approaches to causal reasoning and causal...