SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND POSITIVE ECONOMICS: A REJOINDER
| Author | Hugh V. McLachlan |
| Date | 01 February 1977 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1977.tb00410.x |
| Published date | 01 February 1977 |
Scottish
Journal
of
Political
Economy,
Vol.
24,
No.
1,
February
1977
SCIENTIFIC METHOD
AND
POSITIVE
ECONOMICS:
A
REJOINDER
HUGH
V.
MCLACHLAN
In responding to Katouzian’s Reply
(1976)
to my Comment
(1976),
I
shall
limit myself to answering the charge that, in my paper, there was
“.
. .
some
confusion over the concept of falsifiability” (Katouzian,
1976,
p.
181)
before
identifying the major weakness
of
his supposed
“.
.
.
critical evaluation of the
methodology
of
Positive Economics” (Katouzian,
1976,
p.
180)
and showing
that his argument does not meet my objections to the use of the criterion
of falsifiability.
I
am criticised
for
thinking that
“. . .
Popper’s proposed
differentia specijica
for distinguishing science from metaphysics [i.e. the criterion
of
falsifiability]
suggests ‘that empirical claims cannot be known
to
be true since we cannot
logically prove that they are true’
”
(Katouzian,
1976,
p.
182).
This criticism
seems to me to be rather strange since, as a matter
of
fact, some people have
been misled by Popper’s criterion of falsifiability into thinking that empirical
claims
(as
opposed to logical
or
mathematical claims) cannot be known to be
true (see, for example, Magee,
1973,
pp.
35-55).
Consider what Popper
himself has to say about a particular category of empirical claims, namely
scientific ones, after reflection upon the criterion
of
falsification and the nature
of deductive arguments
:
I
think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not
look upon science as a “body of knowledge”, but, rather, as a system of
hypotheses; that is to say,
a
system
of
guesses
or
anticipations which
in
principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they
stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know
that they are “true”
or
“more or less certain”
or
even “probable”
(1968,
p.
317).
Popper’s
differentia specijica
suggests to Popper that scientific claims cannot
be known to be true since they cannot be logically [i.e. deductively] proved to
be true. Reason for rejecting Popper’s conclusion was given in my Comment.
Furthermore,
I
am said to have made
“.
.
.
the erroneous claim that state-
ments such as ‘sex can often lead to pregnancy’ and ‘rising wages is an
explanation of inflation’ are unfalsifiable” (Katouzian,
1976,
p.
182).
I
do
not deny making this claim but
I
deny that it is erroneous. Katouzian does
not show that the claim is false nor does he offer any reason for thinking
it to be false. Unfortunately,
I
do not have sufficient space to reiterate
or
to
develop my argument to suggest that it
is
true.
In mounting a supposed
“. .
.
critical evaluation
of
the methodology of
Positive Economics”
(1976,
p.
180),
Katouzian notes that positive economists
have proposed certain criteria in terms of which economic statements should
be considered to be scientific and that in order to meet this requirement, they
83
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