Chapter dzǵ: Tacit Preachments are the Worst Kind ȁȁȆeconomics is more like physics or biology, whether notions from anthro-
pology and literary criticism and other disciplines should be imported,
and what should be regarded as the Lakatosian hard core of economics.
Such middle-level methodologizing is presumptuous and officious.Ȃ
Anyone who has refereed for journals knows that hitching onto
fads, routine originality, unnecessary polemics, pretentiousness, tedium,
and bad writing abound. Methodology will hardly remedy these defects
because, for one thing, no single best method is available. Ļe academic
division of labor leaves no presumption that all researchers should tackle
the same problems in the same way.ȃȂĻe methodologist “undertakes to second-guess the scientific community”; he
“claims prescience,” “pretends to know how to achieve knowledge before the knowledge
to be achieved is in place,” insists on “an artificially narrowed range of argument,” and
“lay[s] down legislation for science on the basis of epistemological convictions held with a
vehemence inversely proportional to the amount of evidence that they work” (McCloskey
ȀȈȇȄ, pp.ȁǿ,Ȃȅ,ȄȂ,ȀȂȈ).
Ļe particular examples of exhortation and taboo mentioned in the text are more mine
than McCloskey’s.
ȃK. Klappholz and J. Agassi deplore “the illusion that there can exist in any sci-
ence methodological rules the mere adoption of which will hasten its progress” and warn
against the “belief that, if only economists adopted this or that methodological rule, the
road ahead would at least be cleared (and possibly the traffic would move briskly along
it).” Ļey will heed only the general “exhortation to be critical and always ready to subject
one’s hypotheses to critical scrutiny.” Additional rules to reinforce this general maxim are
“likely to be futile and possibly harmful” (ȀȈȄȈ, pp.ȅǿ,Ȇȃ).
Ļe physicist P.W. Bridgman liked to say that
there is no scientific method as such, but that the most vital feature of the scientist’s
procedure has been merely to do his utmost with his mind, no holds barred. Ļis
means in particular that no special privileges are accorded to authority or to tradi-
tion, that personal prejudices and predilections are carefully guarded against, that
one makes continued check to assure oneself that one is not making mistakes, and
that any line of inquiry will be followed that appears at all promising.... Ļe so-called
scientific method is merely a special case of the method of intelligence, and any appar-
ently unique characteristics are to be explained by the nature of the subject matter
rather than ascribed to the nature of the method itself. (BridgmanȀȈȄȄ, p.Ȅȃȃ)
I think that the objectives of all scientists have this in common—that they are all
trying to get the correct answer to the particular problem in hand.... What appears
to [the working scientist] as the essence of the situation is that he is not consciously
following any prescribed course of action, but feels complete freedom to utilize any
method or device whatever which in the particular situation before him seems likely
to yield the correct answer. In his attack on his specific problem he suffers no inhi-
bitions of precedent or authority, but is completely free to adopt any course that his
ingenuity is capable of suggesting to him. No one standing on the outside can predict