2008•The New Palgrave Dictionary of EconomicsRequires access
Positivism
Bruce Caldwell
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Abstract
The article identifies the major tenets of logical positivism and its successor, logical empiricism, two important movements within 20th-century philosophy of science. It then documents some of the arguments that led to the decline of positivism in the latter half of the 20th century. The impact of positivist ideas on the work of economists writing about economic methodology is examined in a final section.