Civilization and Its Discounts

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9686729
AutoresPhilip Mirowski (0000-0002-0261-8934, University of Notre Dame, autor de correspondencia)
Año1995
Volumen34
Número3
Páginas541-560
Fecha de publicación1995-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaDialogue (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0012-2173 • E-ISSN: 1759-0949
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0012217300009100
OpenAlexW2028320072
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas27

Recent breakthroughs in the history and sociology of science have begun to help us to appreciate the vast complexity and intricate character of empirical endeavours in the sciences. The days when philosophers could blandly gesture towards “observation statements” or “falsification,” as if they were some readily understood phenomena or set of procedures, are gone, happily. This does not mean we can merely use the Duhem-Quine thesis as a shibboleth, however: we are now much more sensitive to immense difficulties in establishing viable claims to replication (Chen 1994) or establishing the absence of selectivity bias, or convincing others of adequacy of experimental controls. Yet, even so, I would still assert that modern science studies, with only a very few exceptions, have ignored the problem of the constitution of error in the context of precision quantitative measurement. While rather broad claims have been made concerning measurement by Hacking, Cartwright, Franklin and others, none goes so far as to examine the actual manipulation of the numerical data. More distressingly, in the areas of economics and economic methodology, we have not even got so far as have the researchers in science studies. This fact alone should provide grounds for scepticism about the claim in Cartwright (1989) that philosophy of scientific inference has something to learn from the history of econometrics

Constitution · Context (archaeology) · Economics · Epistemology · Inference · Political science · Positive economics · Set (abstract data type) · Skepticism · Sociology · Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis · Computer Science · Economic Theory and Institutions · History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science