Roger Backhouse is a key figure in the field of economic methodology. Explorations in Economic Methodology both clarifies and responds to the issues raised by the literature and argues that methodology is an essential activity. Offering a constructive, but critical, response to the recent literature, this collection provides important new insights for students and researchers in economic methodology and the philosophy of science.

Roger E. Backhouse is Professor of the History and Philosophy of Economics at the University of Birmingham.

Chapter 1 Introduction; Part 1 Rethinking Lakatos; Chapter 2 The neo-Walrasian research programme in macroeconomics; Chapter 3 Lakatos and Economics; Chapter 4 Lakatosian perspectives on general equilibrium analysis; Chapter 5 The Lakatosian legacy in economic methodology; Part 2 Rhetoric and postmodernism in economics; Chapter 6 The hermeneutic challenge to economics; Chapter 7 Rhetoric and methodology; Chapter 8 A decade of rhetoric; Chapter 9 Should economists embrace postmodernism?; Part 3 Economists on methodology; Chapter 10 The value of Post Keynesian economics; Chapter 11 Should we ignore methodology?; Chapter 12 Economic laws and economic history; Chapter 13 Is there life in contemporary academic economics?; Chapter 14 Vision and progress in economic thought; Part 4 Pragmatism and empirical philosophy of science; Chapter 15 The fixation of economic beliefs; Chapter 16 An empirical philosophy of economic theory; Chapter 17 An 'inexact' philosophy of economics?; Chapter 18 Philosophical foundations of the social sciences;