Samuelson rejected Friedman’s instrumentalism as a political defense of laissez faire

Evidence

Samuelson seemed to share, at least in part, the suspicion of some of Friedman’s critics that Friedman’s methodological views were also political, a way of defending what Samuelson called “the perfectly competitive laissez faire model of economics.” It was “fundamentally wrong,” wrote Samuelson, to think “that unrealism in the sense of factual inaccuracy even to a tolerable degree of approximation is anything but a demerit for a theory or hypothesis. … Some inaccuracies are worse than others, but that is only to say that some sins against empirical science are worse than others, not that a sin is a merit. … The fact that nothing is perfectly accurate should not be an excuse to relax our standards of scrutiny of the empirical validity that the propositions of economics do or do not possess.” (1963, pp. 233, 236) Just as there is no unitary “scientific method,” faithful following of which guarantees scientific advances, there is not likely to be a productive, rule-like economic methodology. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 58

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Samuelson’s mathematized economics rivaled Friedman’s instrumentalist methodology — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 57

Broader Connections

• Samuelson’s mathematized economics rivaled Friedman’s instrumentalist methodology #corroborates (0.80) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 57