Diversity in the Moral Sciences

Abstract

Pete Boettke’s “What Is Still Wrong with the Austrian School of Economics?” sketches a program for Austrian economics based on a Kuhnesque analysis of scientific communities. His core recommendations focus on what we might call the Uptake and Diffusion dimensions of the scientific enterprise. If taken as a core commitment, they entail an Integrationist program, a concomitant of which is a reduction in the unique insights of the Austrian approach and, so, an overall reduction of the diversity of perspectives in political economy and moral sciences. A cost of this program is to decrease the diversity of perspectives in economics, which in turn decreases the ability of Republic of Economic Science to explore and solve a wider variety of problems. The author presents the “Fundamental Diversity Dilemma,” according to which there is a trade-off between uptake/plausibility and diversity: as we increase uptake and plausibility, we decrease diversity. The author concludes with a defense of the role of heterodox research programs, and questioning the focus on a small set of metrics to indicate excellent and important research.

Citation

Gaus, G. (2019), "Diversity in the Moral Sciences", D'Amico, D.J. and Martin, A.G. (Ed.) Assessing Austrian Economics (Advances in Austrian Economics, Vol. 24), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 49-59. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-213420190000024005