ABSTRACT
Among the new perspectives introduced to the discipline of economics over the last few decades, critical realism, for various reasons, stands out as one of the most challenging. Two seminal books by Tony Lawson, Economics and Reality and Reorienting Economics, have played a pivotal role in the developments so far, setting the agenda for the unfolding of a critical realist project within economics. Lawson and his associates downplay endeavours aimed at developing critical realist-inspired analyses of substantive economic phenomena and issues. Rather, they choose to restrict the scope of the project to philosophical underlabouring for various scientific practices within the discipline. The overall goal of these endeavours seems to be to reorient the whole discipline of economics towards increased attention to ontological questions in general, and especially to the ontological theories embodied in the critical realist position.
