Economic Methodology Between Monism and Dualism

In this age of rising technocracy economists are called upon to re examine the methodological and epistemological foundations of their science. After an introduction concerning the nature and importance of economic methodology, this paper contains four sections. The first provides a summary overview of the development of economic methodology in the 20th century. The second reviews some aspects of what undoubtedly constitutes the most important methodological debate of the 20th century, namely the instrumentalism-versus-realism debate. The third section is devoted to the ongoing critique and disagreement brought forward by the Austrian School of economics in the domain of methodology. In the final section we consider the question “Where is economics going?”.