ABSTRACT
When I began studying methodology in the early 1960s, there was little to read. There was, of course, the ubiquitous 1953 article by Milton Friedman and the ubiquitous textbook references to it. Being an aspiring methodologist, it is reasonable to think that my reading would have begun with this article, but for two reasons it did not. First, I had read Paul Samuelson’s critique which convinced me that Friedman’s methodology was ‘wrong’. Second, coincidentally, a fellow graduate student told me of his experience with the Journal of Political Economy (JPE), where he had recently submitted a paper on methodology. He was told that without including a reference to Friedman’s article, there was little chance of publication. In an immature, petulant state of mind, I vowed never to read Friedman’s article -a vow that was kept for over ten years.
