Introduction

Popper’s infl uence in the social sciences, including economics, has been pervasive, certainly as refl ected in the attention that has been devoted to analysing and interpreting his prescriptive philosophy of science. But his prescriptions also bear a deeply ambiguous relationship to the actual practice of social scientists. This ambivalent position has been well rehearsed within the literature on economic methodology and is addressed in a number of the chapters of this volume. Given the voluminous body of literature that Popper’s work has generated within economics, a reasonable question to pose to yet another volume in this area, is: what is distinct, or to invoke the economic nomenclature, what is the ‘value-added’ of another addition to the literature? Apart from the celebratory motivation of acknowledging the centenary of Popper’s birth, which was the original rationale for undertaking this project, the more substantive rationale was to avail of the occasion to refl ect and reconsider fundamental aspects of Popper’s work in the light of major developments in twentieth-century philosophy. In particular the emergence of the realist/anti-realist debate, which we consider to be among the most signifi cant developments in both twentieth-century philosophy and philosophy of science. Conjoined with this has been the continuing debate on the induction/anti-induction issue, so central to Popper’s whole philosophical project. Therefore our central focus in this volume is the re-examination of Popper’s work in the light of these major debates.