The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

Living Edition
| Editors: Palgrave Macmillan

Instrumentalism and Operationalism

  • Lawrence A. Boland
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_2077-1
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Abstract

Instrumentalism and Operationalism are the methodological doctrines associated respectively with Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson. Each has a long philosophical history. Instrumentalism was the 18th-century doctrine created to deal with the Newton mechanics; Operationalism was the early 20th-century doctrine created to deal with Einstein’ general relativity. With Instrumentalism one can say that theories do not have to be true, just useful – as Friedman argued in 1953. With Operationalism one is required to express theories only in terms of observable and measurable variables. Samuelson’s early work was designed to demonstrate how theory can be made operational and thus potentially refutable.

Keywords

Assumptions Austrian economics Behaviouralism Berkeley, Bishop G. Bridgman, P. Consumer’s demand curve Einstein, A. Friedman, M. Instrumentalism Mathematics and economics Methodology of economics Neoclassical economics Newton, I. Operationalism Operationally meaningful Perfect competition Positive economics Positivism Psychology Revealed preference theory Samuelson, P. A. Slutsky equation Tautologies Utility functions Verificationism Weak axiom of revealed preference 

JEL Classifications

B4 
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  • Lawrence A. Boland
    • 1
  1. 1.