ABSTRACT
I turn, then, to examine how the understandings and conclusions reached so far bear upon the doing of economics. Now I must straightaway emphasise that it is impossible to provide here a package of detailed, specific rules which have only to be followed. Critical realism does not come like this. At the same time, of course, I am obviously not advocating an 'anything goes' project. Much of the discussion has been devoted to revealing the errors and limitations of applying various definite methods, aims and criteria in the context of social phenomena. But a fundamental component of my argument (and indeed a central plank in the critique of deductivism in economics) is the recognition that the subject and context of any analysis will bear on the analytical methods and criteria that are appropriate. Given the (unavoidably) high level of abstraction of the perspective systematised in the previous two chapters, with the focus being on relatively generalised features of social phenomena, any analytical implications that can be drawn will inevitably be correspondingly general in nature: basically taking the form of broad criteria and strategy. The insights gained from these last chapters do indicate a need for a basic re-orientation of the discipline, primarily a transformation in accepted objectives. And we will see that they do also indicate a good deal about the direction in which the discipline ought to move. But they cannot be used to contrive a list of detailed instructions which practising scientists have only to act upon.
