Political economy

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 867647221

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-93157

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Chapman, Sydney John http://d-nb.info/gnd/123743141

Title:: Political economy

Place of publication:: London [u.a.]

Publisher:: Williams & Norgate [u.a.]

Year of publication:: 1912

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (255 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

28 POLITICAL ECONOMY the method of watching, directly or in records, multitudes of facts with a view to discovering their causal relationships, whether it is applied to existing conditions or historically, everybody is fully convinced in these days. But pure induction is not a flawless method. It labours under the limitation that, though it can declare what is, it cannot unaided explain why it is. To explain why a law holds we must always have recourse to analysis. Nevertheless, induction is indispensable, and no more subordinate than deduction. The former indicates what needs to be explained ; and to discover what needs explanation is sometimes far more difficult than to explain. Moreover, by separating from the seeming chaos of economic phenomena the sequences and co-existences which are repeated, it suggests uniformities, and thus gives birth to the soul of scientific explanation, the hypothesis. Further, its aid must be enlisted in the testing of hypothesis. The broad generalisations of economics, as those of every other science, are concerned with tendencies. We are not, therefore, trying to discover exactly what happens at any moment of time, and it would not be of much value merely to describe the economic world to those gifted with powers of observa-

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: Political economy

Monograph

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation