A deeper struggle for the soul of economics

ABSTRACT Kevin Hoover explores retroduction as a means of theorizing in macro-economics, rather than exclusive reliance on deductivism or inductivism. Retroduction is discussed as involving conceptualization with respect to empirical evidence as a means of identifying causal mechanisms as the basis for theory in the form of mathematical models. It is put forward as a preferred alternative to more fundamental reform of macro-economics, whose justification Hoover dismisses as being ‘ideological’. Yet ideology refers to a position on metaphysics such as Hoover himself sets out in terms of open systems, which would significantly extend the scope for retroduction.