نقدي بر ماهيت «علم اقتصاد» (با رويكرد ارزشي)

A Critical Analysis of the Nature of Economics (A Value Theoretic Approach)

Historically, the knowledge and economic epistemology was organized as an independent branch of science by Adam Smith since the second half of the eighteenth century. During this period, which has experienced quite a number of alternating theorizations, a critical problem has existed since then that the whole body of economic theories should possess the necessity of being flexible and adaptive with respect to human and social topics as well as to the complexities of behavioral and judgmental dimensions and at the same time benefit from a sound analytic structure and logical cohesion. Based on this view, different school of thoughts has emerged. Philosophers and social thinkers have played their own roles and enhanced economic theorization by adopting different world views. From the beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of dichotomy between positive and normative economics was proposed by John Neville Keynes, hence confining the scope of knowledge regarding economic behavior to that of empirical and quantitative approach. This necessarily made the real facts of economic behavior at personal and social level to be ignored. At present, economic studies as a science is facing a number of problems and disorders by neglecting the status of the "value" in the system of thoughts. The value judgment of economists, the nature of "economic man" and the analysis of its real and ideal behavior together with the limitations of using empirical methods in economics are among the topics which have been dealt with in this paper.