Review of The methodology of positive economics : reflections on the Milton Friedman legacy , ed . Uskali Mäki

Friedman's 1953 essay " The methodology of positive economics " is undoubtedly one of the—or perhaps the—most influential and most widely and hotly debated papers on economic methodology. What economic methodologist would not dream of having more than 2,500 citations in Google Scholar for writing " the only essay on methodology that a large number, perhaps majority, of economists have ever read " (Hausman 1992, 162)? At the same time the essay appears somewhat difficult to interpret and, to the extent that it has been interpreted, controversial. Indeed, many different methodological perspectives have been read into it. According to one interpreter, the essay " provides ingredients for a number of doctrines, such as fictionalism, instrumentalism, positivism, falsificationism, pragmatism, conventionalism, social constructivism, and realism " (Mäki 2003, 504) and " What the reader is served is an F-mix, a mixture of ingredients many of which are ambiguous and some of which are hard to reconcile with one another " (Mäki, 90 [all undated page references are to the volume under review]); according to another, " One can find in it echoes, and sometimes much more than echoes, of Popper, Kuhn, Quine, Toulmin, Laudan, and even Feyerabend " (Blaug, 351). But this apparent confusion does not stop commentators taking a firm view on its worth: methodologists and philosophers have generally taken a very critical stance, whereas the majority of practising economists seems to endorse its conclusions, whatever they are taken to be (Hands 2001, 57). It should be no surprise, then, that more than half a century after its publication, the essay still attracts an audience. The book under review is the outcome of a 2003 conference held at Erasmus University Rotterdam to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the essay's publication. According to its editor, the volume collects papers that " were