Mémorial to Léon H. Dupriez
Université catholique de Louvain
(Belgium)
Mémorial to Léon H. Dupriez
Université catholique de Louvain
(Belgium)
"A realistic explanation
in economics must recognise the essential characteristics of observed facts
and thus adopt the form of abstraction best adapted to respect these…”
"It is up to us
to discern from the widely elaborate forms of abstraction available in
economics th form whose logic is best adapted to the phenomena requiring
explanation. Though a complete union between inductive and deductive methods
seems impossible, it is vital that one attempts to bring them closer together
as much as possible. This is because, on the one hand, the statistical
analysis and historical study will present the facts in a way that will
set theoretical problems validly and provide elements for verification,
whilst on the other hand, the abstract explanation founded on deductive
hypotheses will respect the nature of facts observed and will reason with
those hypotheses closest to the facts.”
"These voluntary
acts are therefore the object of economic explanation, the starting point
for two fundamental forms of analysis. Firstly deductive [i. e. the so-called
“subjective”] analysis concerned with the economic motivations of acts,
i. e. with the motivations of the “economising main”. So, this deductive
analysis rationalises the behaviours of the maximisation of utilities and
the minimisation of costs which dominate these acts. Secondly, there is
inductive or “objective” analysis that affects the network of inter-relations
established between facts, formerly between decisions defined by
their economic motivations and statistically by a historical sequence of
observed facts.”
| < The second pillar of Dupriez’s Epistemology according to himself |
Displayed on October 13th,
2001
page : Université
catholique de Louvain|
ECON
Dept |
IRES Center
for Economic Research