ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits Sheila Dow’s important 1990 essay on dualism. By dualism, she meant ‘the practice of organising thought by means of all-encompassing mutually-exclusive categories, with fixed meanings’. It is proposed here that there are several possible types of dualism, including ontological, epistemic, taxonomic and ethical dualism. Although Dow mentioned ontological examples, pointing to system openness and two-way causation, her main focus was on epistemic and taxonomic dualism. Quantum physics (also mentioned by Dow) provides examples of ontological non-dualism. However, non-dualism is much less obvious in the ontology of the socio-economic world, even if evolution and change are considered. Further, if reality is open (in some sense) or non-dualist, then there is no reason as to why theories that are used to analyse reality must also be open or non-dualist. The essay argues that the complexity and evolution of socio-economic reality provides some basis for epistemic non-dualism in some instances. However, by contrast, some ‘fuzzy’ taxonomic dualism is generally necessary. A reconsideration of Dow’s prescient essay also casts some light on the role of mathematics in economics, but it reaches conclusions that differ from those in the subsequent work of Tony Lawson.
JEL Codes: A12, B40, B50
