ABSTRACT
After having, in the two preceding chapters, dissected the basic grammatical structure of economic knowledge and discussed the Integral methodological framework within which we will be practicing our epistemology, let us now finally enter into the thick of things. It is hardly possible to take as our object economics as a whole, since as we saw this is the set of all knowledge construction processes adopted by all the individuals who declare themselves to be economists. In Chapter 2, we saw that “the” economist does not in fact exist and that there are only ever “p-adequate economists,” that is, individuals who practice economics according to some paradigm p. We shall be devoting this chapter and the next to a specific paradigm called neoclassical economics, which has dominated the economics profession from the turn of the twentieth century until, roughly, the 1980s. The rationale for focusing on this particular paradigm is not hard to find, and it is twofold: first, it is clearly the paradigm that has dominated teaching and research within economics for many decades, and no practicing economist today can afford to ignore her own neoclassical roots (regardless of whether she rejects or condones them); but second, and more importantly, even though front-line research has moved on to horizons we will discuss later on, the basic neoclassical mindset – the principles and rules of the neoclassical paradigm – still dominates undergraduate teaching as well as a significant proportion of theoretical and applied research to this day. So it seems only normal to start our discussion of epistemological issues with this paradigm, which the majority of today’s practicing economists have had to “suffer through,” for better or for worse, in their professional trajectory.
