From the Meaning of the Economy to the Definition and Roles of Economics

CRESPO, RICARDO F.

Xalapa, Veracruz, México

Jornada; VII INEM Conference; 2009

International Network for Economic Methodology

Uskali Mäki has contended that “economics” is a dangerously aggregated notion: “there is no one homogeneous ‘economics’.” Within all the versions of economics two of them have predominated throughout history. The first one refers to a portion of human affairs related with the material condition of the human being. The second one refers to a perspective of analysis of all human actions. The emergence of the latter has to do with epistemological requirements that economics has incorporated. Both definitions correspond to different conceptions of rationality. In the paper, first, the notion and classification of types of rationality of human affairs will be presented as a necessary tool to understand the argument. Then those two versions of economics will be introduced together with an appraisal of their pros and cons. Third, a textual analysis of the words related to economics, i.e., economy, economic and economically, will be presented. The intention of this analysis is to discover which of the two versions deals better with what is ordinarily understood as economic. It will also give origin to a proposal about the tasks of economics. A related but analytically separable topic will thirdly be tackled: the parallel theoretical and semantic problem involved in the concept of maximization as used in economics. A “diagnosis” about why economics has become a science about something that is not its real subject will come then followed by a proposal of “therapy”.