The present essay investigates F.A. Hayek's epistemology and his methodology of sciences of complex phenomena for implications relevant to an explanation of Hayek's own socalled "epistemic turn." The thesis defended here is that Hayek's dissatisfaction with his technical economics - in...

From the early-1950s on, F.A. Hayek was concerned with the development of a methodology of sciences that study systems of complex phenomena. Hayek argued that the knowledge that can be acquired about such systems is, in virtue of their complexity (and the comparatively narrow boundaries of human...

The following analysis is meant to contribute to a history of rational choice theory. More specifically, I provide a multi-layered account of rational choice theory in terms of its biography as a scientific object. I argue that its axiomatic version, choice theory traveled between different...

In 1982 my book Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century was published. At the 2017 History of Economics society meeting, a session was held to mark the 35th anniversary of that event. Papers by Wade Hands, Kevin Hoover, Tony Lawson, and the trio Peter Boettke, Solomon...

The method appropriate to the historical and conceptual investigation of Hayek’s ideas is implicit in his own writings on the methodology of disciplines that study complex phenomena. The phenomena of Hayek’s career are complex phenomena requiring a method appropriate to this complexity.

This paper discusses the impact of Sraffa's thinking on economics. It argues increasing specialization in research is producing an ‘all trees, no forest' fragmentation of economics that creates opportunities for a return to concerns that motivated classical political economy. It associates...

Why would social science need the help from quantum mechanics? First, there are many unanswerable questions in social science. Are financial markets predictable? How to predict the financial markets? These important questions are not answerable in the existing framework of finance or economics....

This article addresses Kondratiev’s approach to the problems of economic dynamics, cycle and conjuncture in the context of a new methodological agenda which was formulated in the 1920’s in Europe and the USA by representatives of the "brilliant generation of economists," mostly members of...

Friedrich Hayek was a fervent advocate of the methodological specificity of the social sciences. However, given his contact with Karl Popper, several historians and philosophers have characterised his final position as Popperian, that is, a position that would have accepted the unity of the...