ABSTRACT
Methodology is a part of epistemology, the theory of knowledge. Epistemology, along with ontology, cosmology, and theology, is frequently classified as metaphysics. Usually only a small minority of American economists have professed an interest in methodology. The large majority used to disclaim any interest in such issues. These disclaimers were based on a misunderstanding of a kind different from that underlying the antitheoretical pronouncements of the extreme historicists and institutionalists. The antitheorists were not aware of the fact that they were theorizing or using theory. But while the researcher in economics cannot avoid using a method and implicitly accepting an epistemological position on how to distinguish the knowable from the unknowable, the true from the false, the probable from the improbable, it is possible for him to refrain from talking about methodology.
