ABSTRACT
The burden of the foregoing chapters has been that there is a serious inconsistency between economists’ methodological precept of a superficial methodological monism and their practice of a subjectivist-interpretive methodology with a teleological mode of explanation. Some recent methodological work in economics has also made the suggestion that there are wide gaps between precepts and practice, but this work has not been concerned with the above-mentioned inconsistency which I have been discussing. Rather it has identified a quite different methodological gap between economists’ precept and practice in the matter of empirical testing. In this chapter I shall review this second sort of inconsistency and argue that there is indeed a twofold gap between economists’ methodological precepts and their practice; and I shall indicate how I would argue that these gaps should be closed.
