A brief history of the three long stages of the scientification of economic knowledge
Abstract. The article presents a narrative history of the development of the economy as a process of its scientification - the acquisition of features that, under certain historical conditions, were characteristic of academic knowledge. The definition of scientization as a process of development of various fields of knowledge, acquiring rigor in the presentation of their provisions, subject area, methodology and practical significance is formulated. It is shown that within the framework of the narrative, a relevant presentation of the main stages of the evolution of economics is feasible. The sections of economic knowledge are designated: didactic (educational, school), popular science and expert economics, not included in the classification of J.N. Keynes. The distinctive features of economics are highlighted: randomness in the genesis, complexity of the structure, pluralism, long-term dominance of the ethical (normative, regulatory) component in science, the paucity of the main ways to prove economic hypotheses.
Keywords: economic knowledge, genesis, development, scientization, art, science, postmodernism.
Highlights:
- economic knowledge has now gone through three stages of scientization, developing co-evolutionarily, that is, together with other areas of theoretical and applied knowledge;
- the structure of economic knowledge is complex and includes, in addition to normative, positive and political components, also didactic, popular science and expert components;
- economics continues to develop, combining features of science and art, which makes it very adaptive to solving practical problems.
Kirill V. Fenin, Aleksey V. Smirnov, Maria N. Tkacheva - Saratov National Research State University named after N.G. Chernyshevsky, Saratov, Russia