ABSTRACT
The most important methodological issue in economics has been and persists to be over what is called the 'realism' of theories and their 'assumptions'. Profit maximization, perfect information, transitive preferences, diminishing returns, rational expectations, perfectly competitive markets, givenness of tastes, technology and institutional framework, non-gendered agents - these and many other ideas have been assumed by some economists and questioned by others. The issue has often been whether such assumptions are ('too') unrealistic or ('sufficiently') realistic or whether it matters at all if they are one way rather than the other.
