Last updated: 2024-12-16, after coordination with the department.

The course is divided into two parts. The first part concern philosophy of science and scientific-internal questions, the second part discusses scientific practice from external perspectives: Historical, ethical, political, sustainability, and the sociology of scientific practice.

The aim is that students should know and discuss the most common arguments made on the knowledge-theoretical grounding of scientific practice in economics and related fields such as finance and management science.

Lectures

MET528 will be given in weekly lectures. We will meet in Auditorium I, every Tuesday afternoon throughout the semester, from 1415 to 1600. First day of lectures is January 7, last day is April 8.

Evaluation

There is a mandatory term paper with deadline by the end of the lectures. Supervision will be available for the choice of topic and method to approach it. Students are expected to present their topic to the class at an early stage. For course approval, (1) active participation in class, (2) the presentation of term paper topic and (3) an acceptable term paper is required.

The deadline of the term paper is 2024-05-05. There will also be a written exam in the latter half of June to test understanding of the written material.

Readings

There are two required books:

• Samir Okasha (2016). Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction. Second Edition, Oxford University Press.
• Nancy Cartwright and Eleonora Montuschi eds. (2014). Philosophy of Social Science: A New Introduction. Oxford University Press.

These books are available for ordering through the department admin if you want to use your department funding. All of the book by Okasha is mandatory, much of Cartwright and Montuschi will also be mandatory.

There will also be a number of papers to read that will be made available later.

Lecture plan

Note that the reading marked with an “*” will be considered particularly important when it comes to testing on the written exam. All listed readings are relevant, and for the evaluation of your term paper, whether there is an ‘*’ attached to a reading is of no consequence.

As of December 2024, the list of papers is tentative.

1. 2025-01-07. Introduction and motivation. Why do we need (a) philosophy of science?
   • Ben Goldacre (2008). “The Doctor will sue you now”, Chapter 10 in Bad Science.
   • Alan Sokal (1996). Transgressing the boundaries: Toward a transformative hermenutics of quantum gravity. Social Text 46/47: 217-252.
   • Alan Sokal (1996). Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword. Dissent 43(4): 93-99.
   • John Baez (2006). The Bogdanoff Affair.
   • Cartwright and Montuschi (2014). Introduction, p. 1-9
2. 2025-01-14. Popper and some classical challenges
   • * Samir Okasha (2002). Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
   • * Larry Laudan (1983). “The Demise of the Demarcation Problem.” In Cohen, R. S. & Laudan, L. (Eds.), Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 111-127.
   • Itai Yanai and Martin J. Lercher (2021). Disputes in modern science are settled with empiricism alone, an approach early scholars would have questioned [bookreview], Science 371(6524): 37.
3. 2025-01-21. Scientific explanations
   • Deborah Tollefsen (2014). Social Ontology. In Cartwright and Montuschi, chapter 5, p 85-101.
   • Helen Longino (2014). Individuals or Populations? In Cartwright and Montuschi, chapter 6, p 102-120.
   • * Joseph Heath (2005). Methodological Individualism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
   • * Kevin Hoover (2009) Microfoundations and the Ontology of Macroeconomics. in Harold Kincaid and Donald Ross, editors, Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Economic Science*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009; ch. 14, pp. 386-409.
4. 2025-01-28. Causality
   • Nancy Cartwright (2014). Causal Inference. In Cartwright and Montuschi, chapter 16, p 308-326.
   • * Paul W. Holland (1986). Statistics and Causal Inference. Journal of American Statistical Association, 81(396): 945-960.
   • * James J. Heckman and Rodrigo Pinot (2023). Econometric Causality: The Central Role of Thought Experiments NBER Working paper 31945.
5. 2025-02-04. Statistics: measurement, prediction and inference
   • * Milton Friedman (1953). The Methodology of Positive Economics. Excerpt from Essays in Positive Economics, University of Chicago Press. Reprinted in Readings in The Philosophy of Social Science (ed: Michael Martin and Lee C. McIntyre, MIT Press, 1994), page 647-660.
   • * John H. Cochrane (1989). The Sensitivity of Tests of the Intertemporal Allocation of Consumption to Near-Rational Alternatives. American Economic Review, 79(3): 319-337.
   • Nancy Cartwright and Rosa Runhardt (2014). Measurement. In Cartwright and Montuschi, chapter 14, p 265-287.
6. 2025-02-11. Statistical practice
   • John P.A. Ioannidis (2005). Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med, 2(8): 696-701.
   • * Abel Brodeur, Mathias Lé, Marc Sangnier and Yanos Zylberberg (2016). Star Wars: The Empirics Strike Back, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 8(1): 1-32.
   • * Christensen, Garret, and Edward Miguel (2018). Transparency, Reproducibility, and the Credibility of Economics Research. Journal of Economic Literature, 56(3): 920-80.
   • Dale J. Poirier (1988). Frequentist and Subjectivist Perspectives on the Problems of Model Building in Economics. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2(1): 121-144.
7. 2025-02-18. Economists making things happen
   • * Eileen Munro (2014). Evidence-Based Policy. In Cartwright and Montuschi, Chapter 3, p 48-67.
   • Michel Callon (2007). What Does It Mean to Say That Economics Is Performative? Chapter 11, p. 311-357 of Do Economists make Markets (ed by MacKenzie, Muniesa and Siu), Princeton University Press.
   • Ferraro et al (2005). Economics Language and Assumptions: How Theories can Become Self-Fulfilling. Academy of Management Research. 30(1), 8-24.
8. 2025-02-25. The history of a scientific subject These readings are not selected only for their contents, but for the different approaches to writing intellectual history they represent.
   • * Card, David, and Stefano DellaVigna. 2013. Nine Facts about Top Journals in Economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 51 (1): 144-61.
   • B. F. Kiker (1966). The Historical Roots of the Concept of Human Capital, Journal of Political Economy, 74(5), 481-499.
   • Donald MacKenzie (2001). Physics and Finance: S-Terms and Modern Finance as a Topic for Science Studies, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 26(2), 115-144.
   • Montesinos, Hugo & Brice, Brandon. (2019). The Era of Evidence.
   • Schwalbe, Ulrich and Paul Walker (2001). Zermelo and the Early History of Game Theory Games and Economic Behavior, 34(1), 123-137.
9. 2025-03-04. The social science of science
   • * Fourcade, Marion, Etienne Ollion, and Yann Algan (2015). The Superiority of Economists. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(1): 89-114.
   • John Gibson (2018). The Micro-Geography of Academic Research: How Distinctive is Economics?, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 68: 467-484.
   • * Robert Schultz and Anna Stansbury (2022). The Economics Profession’s Socioeconomic Diversity Problem. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 37(4): 207-230.
   • Conley, John P., and Ali Sina Onder (2014). The Research Productivity of New PhDs in Economics: The Surprisingly High Non-success of the Successful. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(3): 205-16.
   • Arjo Klamer (2014). The culture of academic economics. In The Economics of Economists: Institutional Setting, Individual Incentives and Future Prospects. Edited by A. Lanteri and J. Vromen. Cambridge University Press.
   • * Sarsons, Heather (2017). Recognition for Group Work: Gender Differences in Academia. American Economic Review, 107(5): 141-45.
10. 2025-03-11. Presentations of term paper ideas Each participant prepares a 3-slide presentation of their plan for the termpaper: 1) What is the question, 2) How will you address the question, and 3) What kind of conclusion do you think is possible.
11. 2025-03-18 The politics of science
    • Jeffrey Brainard (2021). Open access takes flight, Science, 371(6524): 16-20.
    • * Karen E.C. Levy and David Merritt Johns (2016). When open data is a Trojan Horse: The weaponization of transparency in science and governance, Big Data and Society, 3(1): 1-6.
    • Rebecca Hersher (2021). Trump EPA Erects New Barriers To Crucial Science, NPR website.
    • * Luigi Zingales (2013). Preventing Economists’ Capture. In Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit it. Edited by Daniel Carpenter and David Moss.
12. 2025-03-25. Implicit and explicit perspectives and values
    • Eleonora Montuschi (2014). Scientific Objectivity. In Cartwright and Montuschi, Chapter 7, p 123-144.
    • * Sharon Crasnow (2014). Feminist Standpoint Theory. In Cartwright and Montuschi, Chapter 8, p 145-161.
    • Heather Douglas (2014). Values in Social Science. In Cartwright and Montuschi, Chapter 9, p 162-182.
13. 2025-04-01. Research ethics
    • * National guidelines for research ethics in the social sciences, law and humanities. Given by the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH) in 2021 (5th edition). English translation published 2022.
    • Edward Asiedu, Dean Karlan, Monica P. Lambon-Quayefio and Christopher R. Udry (2021). A Call for Structured Ethics Appendices in Social Science Papers, Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, 118(29): e2024570118.
14. 2025-04-08. Interdisciplinarity and non-orthodox traditions
    • Sophia Efstathiou and Zara Mirmalek (2014). Interdisciplinarity in Action. In Cartwright and Montuschi, Chapter 12, p 233-248.
    • * Tony Lawson (2006). The nature of heterodox economics. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 30(4), 483-505.
    • Yannick Slade-Caffarel (2018). The nature of heterodox economics revisited. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 43(3): 527–539.