ABSTRACT
Chapters 5 to 7 have shown at length that the whole corpus of mainstream economic theory adopts an unmistakable Weber-Schutz subjectivist-interpretive methodology with a teleological mode of explanation, a methodology which we have seen in Chapter 4 to be radically distinct from the methodology of natural science with its efficient-causal mode of explanation. We should now be able to conclude our case-study of the methods of mainstream economics were it not for the fact that when economists themselves have commented on their methodology they have put forward a view of it which is quite different from the subjectivist – interpretive view which I have been outlining.
