TERENCE W. HUTCHISON 

Dalla «triste scienza» all'«economia positiva»: un secolo e mezzo di progresso?

N.4/1986

Summary — In this paper the author endeavours to answer the question whether there has been progress in political economy during the last 150 years. First of all the criteria are discussed for assessing " progress " in social sciences in comparison with those that can be applied to natural sciences. It is pointed out how in the first ones, therefore also in economics, historical and institutional dimensions have particular relevance such as to bring about great difficulties in attempting an answer to the above question.

The author examines the theoretical developments of political economy through the history of Section F of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section created in 1831. The polemics aroused by its foundation are they themselves indicative of significative and lasting epistemological alternatives. There were who, like Ricardo, claimed full epistemological parity of political economy with the natural sciences; others, like Sedgwick, who opposed radically such programme; finally, who had a propensity to moderate and median objectives.

The author then analyses the most important developments of political economy and of its image among intellectuals and the public, and underlines the tendency of such image to go through cyclical fluctuations.

Three other historical periods after 1831 are analysed: 1881, characterized, under the stimulus of neoclassical theories, by the beginning of a great revival of prestige of the political economy after the profound crisis following the decades of the Ricardian epistemological optimism; 1931, marked by a very serious economic crisis which emphasized the insuffciencies of the dominant theory and brought to light the signs of what was to be known as the "Keynesian revolution"; 1981, when different and opposed alternatives are opened to political economy after a period of depression which followed decades of Keynesian enthusiasm.