Establishment economics is in a much deserved state of disarray. While the natural sciences have made remarkable progress in the 20th century, the mainstream social sciences remain impotent to solve the real and worsening political/ economic problems of our time. Emphasis on fundamental methodological issues has been conspicuously missing from the economic journals for a generation and the cost of this neglect has become clear. Economists in the 1970s continue to ground their analysis on the philosophy of science of logical positivism, a doctrine from which most modern philosophers have long ago retreated in embarrassment.
