Today I continued to read about Economic Methodology, started in fact a new book called Reflection without Rules by D. Wade Hands (2001). Some remarks. First of all, I liked the way the book was put together: "[T]he book, although written primarily with economists in mind does not contain very much economics. There are numerous examples scattered throughout the book, but there is not, as is often the case with methodology books written by philosophers, any detailed case studies or attempts to elaborate discussion of some aspect of economic theory." (p.9) I like this, because I think that there is much to the way economists study human behavior, there is much to be said positively about their methodologies in general, but not, in my opinion, so much in the way the methodologies are actually used, because often the assumptions are wrong and deducing elaborate deductions from false premises is just useless. Thinking about the methods from a broader perspective is in my opinion very interesting and useful, and so the book has been good read so far. The book started by describing the classical economic methodology as espoused by John Stuart Mill and his followers John Cairnes, John Neville Keynes and Lionel Robbins (Sections 2.1.1 to 2.1.3). There are many things that I have to agree with this bunch and one is this obvious fact, that economics is different from physical sciences and actually lucky, because "economists do have immediate access to the causal forces behind economic phenomena." (p.28) What also seems to make sense to me is to construct economics as an "inexact" and "abstract deductive science of tendency laws" (p.24) which uses the method a priori, where the a priori "facts" are things we know directly of ourselves as humans. What seems very strange on the other hand is the way they define economics. For Mill, Cairnes and Keynes: "Political Economy considers mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth." (Mill 1874, pp. 138-9, quoted in Hands, p.22) As mentioned above, this kind of method of finding out consequences of tendency laws, deductive method, is in my opinion justified, but why to restrict the whole science into studying the consequences of just one tendency, greed. Using introspection, that is hardly the only tendency to be found in human nature, and hardly even the most important. It is justified, perhaps, to study this tendency separately, but to study this tendency only seems very strange and arbitrary. Another strange premise in Millian economics is the assumption of methodological individualism: "[S]ocial phenomena are simply the sum of the actions of the individuals in the society." (pp.20-21) Third strange and related assumption is the law of composition of causes, that in economics "the joint effect of several causes is identical with the sum of separate effects" (p. 18). I think that John Ruskin was probably right in pointing out that human behavior and especially economic behavior cannot be studied in ignorance of the constitution of human soul, as he believed that Millian political economy did. I quote from Ruskin: "This [Mill's method] would be a perfectly logical and successful method of analysis, if the accidentals afterwards to be introduced were of the same nature as the powers first examined. Supposing a body in motion to be influenced by constant and inconstant forces, it is usually the simplest way of examining its course to trace it first under the persistent conditions, and afterwards introduce the causes of variation. But the disturbing elements in the social problem are not of the same nature as the constant ones: they alter the essence of the creature under examination the moment they are added; they operate, not mathematically, but chemically, introducing conditions which render all our previous knowledge unavailable. We made learned experiments upon pure nitrogen, and have convinced ourselves that it is a very manageable gas: but, behold! the thing which we have practically to deal with is its chloride; and this, the moment we touch it on our established principles, sends us and or apparatus through the ceiling." Mill believed that there are two different kinds of scientific method, depending on whether the law of composition of causes is in effect (as in mechanics) or whether composition of causes does not hold (as in chemistry). Why Mill thought that in economics the law of composition of causes would be in effect for from the outset it does seem that economics would most naturally be a heteropathic, not experimental science as per Figure 2.1 in page 20 in Hands' book. Section 2.1.4 discusses Austrian Economic Methodology. Knowing nearly nothing about it, Carl Menger's methodology does seem promising for a Christian or in particular Catholic from the outset for: "[H]is underlying philosophical position is best described as a version of Aristotelian essentialist realism." (p.39) And also the formulation of Ludvig von Mises about "the ultimate fact" of economics is promising as compared to pursuit of wealth. von Mises writes: "The characteristic feature of man is precisely that he consciously acts... To act means: to strive after ends, that is, to choose a goal and to resort to means in order to attain the goal sought." (Mises 1978, pp. 4-5, quoted in Hands p. 42)