Lars P. Syll — Methodological arrogance

On reductionism.

This is also the case in philosophy where different methods attempt to exclude other methods by reducing the debate to a lower level of data, e.g, sense data only, or lower order of abstraction, e.g., all abstraction must be reducible to first order. These methodological assumptions reduce justification to observations of objects. For example, David Hume used philosophical reduction to sense data to exclude causality, arguing that causality is nothin more than observation of constant correlation.

The idea is that everything at a higher scale must be accountable at a lower scale. This doesn't even apply in physics (yet) as the hardest science, where the scope of quantum mechanics (micro) and cosmology (macro) still fall outside each other, and questions loom about how to reconcile the micro and macro levels.

To insist on reduction to individual psychology and behavior in economics is indeed arrogant, especially when the social unit in sociology is the family and economic considers economic units in terms of households and firms, and neither human psychology nor behavior are well understood (explained) scientifically.

Reductionism is a methodological assumption that is unsubstantiated by rigorous criteria. It is a stipulation and insisting on it as exclusive is arrogant when there are alternatives in the debate. This is the arrogance of dogmatism rather than open inquiry as the basis of gaining knowledge and the origin of scientific method in an environment where theology reigned.

In short, it is not only arrogance, it is dangerous, as Popper recognized. This is the point of the open society he advocated. Freedom of thought and expression is the basis for inquiry, discovery, and creativity. The discipline of economics risks falling into irrelevance if orthodoxy insists on imposing methodological reductionism as "settled."

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Methodological arrogance
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University