Towards a useful methodology discipline
Much has happened in the field of economic methodology since my first methodology book was published in 1982. And much has not happened. When my first book was published there were only four economic methodology books in the bookstores. There was Stanley Wong's Cambridge Ph.D. thesis [Wong 1978], Ian Stewart's textbook that comments on econometric methodology [Stewart 1979], Homa Katouzian's book that tried to link methodology to ideological disputes [Katouzian 1980], and Mark Blaug's 1980 book that evolved from being the closing chapter of the earlier editions of his famous history of thought textbook. While some theorists found Wong's book interesting, Katouzian's and Stewart's books were mostly ignored in North America. Only Blaug's book had any impact on mainstream economists, and then only on those economists who wished to be able to say something about methodology. Blaug's book was nevertheless a major turning point for those of us interested in the study of economic methodology. Not only did a well-respected publisher publish his book but also the author was well known as the result of the success of his history of economic thought textbook. And the success of his methodology book prompted another leading British publisher to take the plunge into economic methodology. As a consequence, in 1981, Geo. Allen and Unwin's economics editor, Nicholas Brealey, chose to publish my methodology book and Bruce Caldwell's book on the history of economic methodology. With the publishing of our two books in 1982, the explicit academic discipline of economic methodology was born. Today methodology sessions are a staple of every conference of the History of Economics Society in North America. In the last twenty years there have been many books and articles published that are exclusively devoted to economic methodology. But during the 1980s the promotion of methodology was limited to being a subsection of the history of economics discipline. It is interesting to note that when the American Economic Association introduced an itemized list of books and articles in 1963 with its The Journal of Economic Abstracts, methodology was grouped with 'General Economics' and history of thought was a separate category. But when this journal was