Machlup on Knowledge: Science, Subjectivism and the Social Nature of Knowledge

Abstract

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Fritz Machlup was continually concerned with the epistemological foundations and credentials of economics. He was one of very few economists to consider methodology as more than prefatory importance, as a subject of intrinsic and continuous significance to economists. His many writings in this area necessarily were concerned with various questions ultimately pointing to the truth-status of economic analysis (1978). But Machlup also was concerned — as one of an even smaller subset of the discipline — with economics as a system of discourse using language. His many writings in this regard dealt with the rhetoric of economics or, as he phrased it, economic semantics and pointed to qualities of knowledge other than truth value (1963). In his later years, having already produced a major study on the production and distribution of knowledge in the United States (1962), Machlup embarked, with a small army of associates, on an eight-, eventually ten-, volume series on ‘knowledge, its creation, distribution and economic significance’. Prior to his death in 1983 two volumes had been published, on knowledge and knowledge production (1980) and on the branches of learning (1982).

Originally published in Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, vol. 3 (1985), pp. 243–55.

The author is indebted to A. W. Coats, John Davis, Mark Perlman and Margaret Schabas for comments on an earlier draft.