ABSTRACT
The dictionary definition of ‘reflexivity’ is that which is ‘directed back upon itself’ and in this general sense reflexivity can occur in a wide range of human activities from the literature, to art, to science. The reflexivity that is most relevant to economic methodology is where observation of the economy leads to ideas that change behavior which in turn changes (is directed back upon) the economy itself. As George Soros explains in the opening essay to this symposium: ‘For example if investors believe that markets are efficient then that belief will change the way they invest, and that in turn will change the nature of the markets they are observing . . . That is the principle of reflexivity’ (Soros, 2013, p. 310). Various philosophers and social scientists have argued that the possibility of ‘reflexivity’ is the main, or at least one of the main, differences between the social and natural sciences. Despite how one interprets scientific theories (realist, instrumentalist, etc.), the standard ontological presumption is that nature stays as it is while we examine it: or at least it stays as it is to a greater degree than the social world.
