The historical character in the scientific explanations: the German Historical School of Economics (1843 – 1948) This paper is focusing on the large debate carried on in Germany after 1843, when Roscher published his Grundriβ zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirtschaft nach geschichtlicher Methode, in order to consider the historical character of the economic phenomena not only on the practical plane (economic policy), but also on the epistemological plane: “in finished theory” (Roscher). As is well known the debate involved many authors in Germany (Hildebrand, Knies, Schmoller, Schumpeter, Max Weber, Spiethoff, etc) and in other countries (Ingram, Neville Keynes, Messedaglia, Lampertico, Commons, Veblen, Charles Gide, etc.). It ended with the success of the approach of the pure economics, but after about a century the question remains: if the economics is doomed to scientific explications endowed with logical validity, but that “do not have any relevance to an actually existing reality”, or if it is possible to build scientific explanations which are historical in character, in which the data are “taken from real world”, making abstraction “from their historical uniqueness” (Arthur Spiethoff).
El elemento histórico en las explicaciones científicas: la escuela histórica alemana de la economía (1843-1948)
GIOIA, Vitantonio
2014-01-01
Abstract
The historical character in the scientific explanations: the German Historical School of Economics (1843 – 1948) This paper is focusing on the large debate carried on in Germany after 1843, when Roscher published his Grundriβ zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirtschaft nach geschichtlicher Methode, in order to consider the historical character of the economic phenomena not only on the practical plane (economic policy), but also on the epistemological plane: “in finished theory” (Roscher). As is well known the debate involved many authors in Germany (Hildebrand, Knies, Schmoller, Schumpeter, Max Weber, Spiethoff, etc) and in other countries (Ingram, Neville Keynes, Messedaglia, Lampertico, Commons, Veblen, Charles Gide, etc.). It ended with the success of the approach of the pure economics, but after about a century the question remains: if the economics is doomed to scientific explications endowed with logical validity, but that “do not have any relevance to an actually existing reality”, or if it is possible to build scientific explanations which are historical in character, in which the data are “taken from real world”, making abstraction “from their historical uniqueness” (Arthur Spiethoff).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
