ABSTRACT
This chapter adds to the understanding of how knowledge develops and what role agents take in the process. It looks at the knowledge held within the community of economists as an example. The development of the discipline of economics might best be understood by using the concept of paradigm. Indeed, Richard Schmalensee has done this when, building on Kuhn’s normal science and paradigm shifts, he speculated on the future of economics:
. . . [M]any, if not most, of the problems on today’s research agenda will be solved through ‘normal science’. . . . History also suggests, however, that some problems . . . will be solved only by ‘paradigm shifts’ and that these shifts will change both the tools economists use and the problems they study. Whatever the successes that will be achieved by natural extensions of current lines of research, these revolutions will dominate histories of 21stcentury economic thought.
