Rethinking Epistemology: Narratives in Economics as a Social Science

Economics, Social Science and Development*

Development economics nowadays is mainstream economics applied to poor countries. An examination of the core principles of mainstream economics reveals tremendous strengths, but also tremendous weaknesses. Other disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology and political science, have complementary strengths that suggest a role for them as equal partners in development studies and policy. The ar...

Rethinking Right: Moral Epistemology in Management Research

Most management researchers pause at the threshold of objective right and wrong. Their hesitation is understandable. Values imply a “subjective,” personal dimension, one that can invite religious and moral interference in research. The dominant epistemological camps of positivism and subjectivism in management stumble over the notion of moral objectivity. Empirical research can study values in ...

Folk Epistemology as Normative Social Cognition

Epistemology tout court is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of knowledge (as a product) and knowing (as a process that produces knowledge). One of the epistemologist’s goals is to separate the epistemic wheat from the doxastic chaff, the knowledge from the mere belief; another one is to describe the very nature of knowledge: its features, conditions, sources, justification and limits. Fo...

A Social Constructionist Epistemology

Transforming socio-economics with a new epistemology

This paper argues that a new scientific framework (Science II) has been slowly emerging, rivaling the Descartes–Newtonian perspective (Science I) dominant for several hundred years. The Science II framework places a great deal of emphasis on evolution, dynamism, chance and/or pattern recognition. As both cause and effect of the new perspective, scholars in the physical, biological and social sc...