Fritz Machlup, Introductory Remarks (May 1952)

Machlup’s published remarks as chairman introduce a session on “Issues in Methodology.” Their purpose is to expose the methodological commitments already present in economists’ everyday judgments and make them available for conscious discussion. He opens with a playful contrast: methodology belongs to epistemology, commonly classified within metaphysics, yet hundreds of practical-minded economists have assembled to discuss it.

The central distinction is between adopting a method and explicitly discussing methodology. Machlup contrasts economists’ customary disclaimers of methodological interest with the antitheoretical positions of extreme historicists and institutionalists. The latter unknowingly employ theory; researchers who reject methodological discussion nevertheless depend on assumptions about knowledge:

But while the researcher in economics cannot avoid using a method and implicitly accepting an epistemological position on how to distinguish the knowable from the unknowable, the true from the false, the probable from the improbable, it is possible for him to refrain from talking about methodology.

Avoiding discussion is thus possible, but Machlup argues that professed avoidance often fails even on its own terms. Familiar objections to economic arguments already express standards of valid inquiry:

These antimethodologists were not aware of the fact that they talked methodology when they said such things as "this is too abstract," "this is more realistic," "this is purely static reasoning," "this is not statistically verified," "there is no historical evidence for this," and so on.

Abstraction, realism, statistical verification, and historical evidence are therefore methodological concerns, not alternatives to methodology. Moving from the opening joke to this diagnosis, Machlup ends by promising conscious, open discussion from the platform. The remarks justify that discussion without endorsing any particular method: their contribution is to turn unacknowledged standards into explicit questions.