Epistemology, philosophy, and economics: Foundations, methodological pluralism, and the future of knowledge production in economic science

Economic science, despite its claim to status as the most mathematically formalised of the social sciences, rests on philosophical foundations whose neglect has produced recurrent intellectual and practical crises, from the methodological controversies of the late nineteenth century to the predictive failures surrounding the 2007–2008 global financial crisis and the present epistemic challenges of artificial intelligence and big data. Purpose: This article systematically examines the philosophical and epistemological foundations of economic inquiry to articulate a defensible framework of methodological pluralism appropriate to twenty-first-century economic science. This study employs a conceptual-analytical method, combined with a bibliometric description and comparative philosophical analysis. It surveys the principal epistemological schools that have shaped economic thought, maps methods to research questions, and develops a framework of epistemic virtues for contemporary research. Economic knowledge is best understood as plural, fallible, and value-laden, rather than singular, certain, and value-free. Different research questions warrant different methods, and the dominance of any single approach, whether deductive theorizing, econometric inference, or experimental methods, generates systematic blind spots. The findings argue for a pluralist epistemology that integrates deductive, empirical, interpretive, and historical methods and cultivates epistemic virtues, including ontological humility, methodological pluralism, value transparency, empirical responsiveness, and reflexive critique. A philosophically literate economics, attentive to its own foundations, is better positioned to address the complex policy challenges and emerging methodological possibilities of the contemporary moment, including emerging economies such as Indonesia. This study contributes to the growing literature on the philosophy of economics by integrating epistemological analysis with applied research design considerations.