Methodology in a Pluralist Environment

Abstract

The future role for methodology will be conditioned both by the way in which its content has developed in the direction of pluralism, and by the growth and specialisation of the field. The paper suggests that, for methodology to steer a successful course between foundationalism and relativism, there needs to be clarity about the meta-methodological frameworks which methodologists employ (since the pluralism applies to the fields of methodology and philosophy as well as economics per se). The case is made for regarding both the philosophy and methodology which ground practice as provisional, open to influence from practice itself.