Table 6
|
Criticisms of Lakatosian explanations | ||
|
Looseness of Hard Core |
Vagueness of Terminology |
Non-appropriateness for |
|
Hausman, 1992, 1994 |
Hands, 1993 |
Caldwell, 1991 |
|
Hoover, 1992 |
Glass and Johnson, 1989 |
Hands, 1984, 1985, 1990 |
|
Maki, 1980 |
Redman, 1993 |
Salanti, 1994 |
|
Steedman, 1991 | ||
|
“Justification” for current |
Problems of Empirical |
Specific Criticisms |
|
Backhouse, 1994 |
de Marchi 1991 |
Bianchi and Moulin, 1991 |
|
de Marchi , 1991 |
Shearmur, 1991 |
de Marchi and Blaug, 1991 |
|
Hands, 1993 |
Kim, 1991 | |
|
Mirowski, 1987 |
Morgan,1991 |
V. Concluding Comments
The starting point of this work was the influence of the scientific philosophies of Kuhn
and Lakatos in economic thought and the main criticisms of the application of their ideas to
economics. Although the discussion was by no means exhaustive, it enables us to make
some general observations. The first general observation is that the influence of Lakatos
seems to be much stronger among economists than that of Kuhn’s. Chronologically, Kuhn’s
ideas were introduced first in economics in the late 60s and early 70s. In the first few years
the Kuhnian influence was stronger but it progressively declined. The Lakatosian influence
22