How to Design Galilean Fall Experiments in Economics
Philosophy of Science, Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 308-329, 2003
Posted: 18 Jul 2009
Date Written: 2003
Abstract
In the social sciences we hardly can create laboratory conditions, we only can try to find out which kinds of experiments Nature has carried out. Knowledge about Nature’s designs can be used to infer conditions for reliable predictions. This problem was explicitly dealt with in Haavelmo’s (1944) discussion of autonomous relationships, Friedman’s (1953) as-if methodology, and Simon’s (1961) discussions of nearly-decomposable systems. All three accounts take Marshallian partitioning as starting point, however not with a sharp ceteris paribus razor but with the blunt knife of negligibility assumptions. As will be shown, in each account reflection on which influences are negligible, for what phenomena and for how long, played a central role.
Keywords: ceteris paribus, experiment, law of nature
JEL Classification: B41
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation