As microeconomic calculus and macroeconomic estimation superseded earlier approaches to political economy, broad questions about how things are (ontology), how things might be known (epistemology), and how science should proceed (methodology) were neglected. As a corrective, Critical Realism (CR) has been proposed as an alternative to the orthodox deductive‐nomological (ODN) tradition; i.e., to mathematical deduction and statistical induction. In their place, retroduction—the use of analogy, metaphor, intuition and ordinary language—is supposed to illuminate root causes by identifying the deep mechanisms that (...) govern events. CR offers guidelines for social science that are of a most general kind: from initial “premises,” retroduction proceeds to hypotheses about deep structures and mechanisms. The initial premises are determined by a desire to understand events that surprise us. However, nothing is thereby excluded, including ODN. And since historical processes are revealed neither by assumption nor by the net effects of whatever initial conditions hold, it might be apposite to drop the search for (deep) socio‐economic laws and to use whatever evidence is at hand to see whether, and the extent to which, ideal types apply to any given historical sequence. (shrink)

I agree with Paul Lewis that mathematics has a valuable but not all-encompassing role in economics, that event regularities must be supplemented with a persuasive narrative, and that inferences can inform our understanding of economic behavior. However, Lewis's full-throated defense of critical realism does little to allay my original concerns. It is absurd to maintain, as critical realists do, that mainstream economics has nothing valuable to offer heterodox economists, as their critique of the quantity theory of money tries to demonstrate. (...) More crucially, critical realists—unlike Austrian economists—neglect to provide an epistemological explanation of economic actors’ perceptions, which is necessary if we are to bridge critical realism's own division of the social world into the “actual,” “empirical,” and “non-actual real.”. (shrink)

I agree with Paul Lewis that mathematics has a valuable but not all-encompassing role in economics, that event regularities must be supplemented with a persuasive narrative, and that inferences can inform our understanding of economic behavior. However, Lewis's full-throated defense of critical realism does little to allay my original concerns. It is absurd to maintain, as critical realists do, that mainstream economics has nothing valuable to offer heterodox economists, as their critique of the quantity theory of money tries to demonstrate. (...) More crucially, critical realists—unlike Austrian economists—neglect to provide an epistemological explanation of economic actors’ perceptions, which is necessary if we are to bridge critical realism's own division of the social world into the “actual,” “empirical,” and “non-actual real.”. (shrink)

Neural activity and social activity share close parallels, particularly the fact that spontaneous adaptations are paramount in both realms. Environmental pressures require organisms and societies to adapt to new and uncertain situations. Adaptations create, respectively, stronger neural and social networks that may, in turn, make the system more resilient to future uncertainties—but only if the adaptations are beneficial to the system.

Neural activity and social activity share close parallels, particularly the fact that spontaneous adaptations are paramount in both realms. Environmental pressures require organisms and societies to adapt to new and uncertain situations. Adaptations create, respectively, stronger neural and social networks that may, in turn, make the system more resilient to future uncertainties—but only if the adaptations are beneficial to the system.