“Mainstream economics scholarship produces theory without facts ("pure theory") and facts without theory”

"applied economics"
Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 2, Global Falsehoods, p. 27

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Mainstream economics scholarship produces theory without facts ("pure theory") and facts without theory" by Michel Chossudovsky?
Michel Chossudovsky photo
Michel Chossudovsky 24
Canadian economist 1946

Related quotes

“Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Association of American Colleges (1955) Liberal education. Vol. 41, p. 430
1950s

Ronald David Laing photo

“Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory.”

Ch. 1 : Experience as evidence http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/laing.htm
The Politics of Experience (1967)
Context: Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".
We can see other people's behaviour, but not their experience. This has led some people to insist that psychology has nothing to do with the other person's experience, but only with his behaviour.
The other person's behaviour is an experience of mine. My behaviour is an experience of the other. The task of social phenomenology is to relate my experience of the other's behaviour to the other's experience of my behaviour. Its study is the relation between experience and experience: its true field is inter-experience.

Ernest Mandel photo

“For Marx, ‘pure’ economic theory, that is economic theory which abstracts from a specific social structure, is impossible.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

Introduction to Capital. Introduction to volume 1 (1976)

Paul Glover photo

“Action without theory is reckless; theory without action is worthless.”

Paul Glover (1947) Community organizer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American politician

(speech at Center for Popular Economics, Summer Institute), 2006-07-27

W. Edwards Deming photo

“Experience by itself teaches nothing…Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence without theory there is no learning.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Immanuel Kant photo

“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

This is declared to be "an old Kantian maxim" in General Systems Vol. 7-8 (1962)‎, p. 11, by the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, but may simply be a paraphrase or summation of Kantian ideas.
Kant's treatment of the transcendental logic in the First Critique contains a portion, of which this quote may be an ambiguously worded paraphrase. Kant, claiming that both reason and the senses are essential to the formation of our understanding of the world, writes: "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind (A51/B75)".
Disputed

Albert Einstein photo

“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

The earliest published attribution of this quote to Einstein found on Google Books is the 1991 book The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis by Raj Jain (p. 507), but no source to Einstein's original writings is given and the quote itself is older; for example New Guard: Volume 5, Issue 3 from 1961 says on p. 312 http://books.google.com/books?id=5BbZAAAAMAAJ&q=%22fit+the+theory%22#search_anchor "Someone once said that if the facts do not fit the theory, then the facts must be changed", while Product engineering: Volume 29, Issues 9-12 from 1958 gives the slight variant on p. 9 "There is an age-old adage, 'If the facts don't fit the theory, change the theory.' But too often it's easier to keep the theory and change the facts." These quotes are themselves probably variants of an even earlier saying which used the phrasing "so much the worse for the facts", many examples of which can be seen in this search http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=facts+fit+%22so+much+the+worse+for+the+facts%22&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_max:Dec%2031_2%201950&num=10; for example, the 1851 American Whig Review, Volumes 13-14 says on p. 488 http://books.google.com/books?id=910CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA488#v=onepage&q&f=false "However, Mr. Newhall may possibly have been of that casuist's opinion, who, when told that the facts of the matter did not bear out his hypothesis, said 'So much the worse for the facts.'" The German idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte circa 1800 did say "If theory conflicts with the facts, so much the worse for the facts." The Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs in his "Tactics and Ethics" (1923) echoed the same quotation.
Misattributed

Claude Bernard photo

“When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.”

Claude Bernard (1813–1878) French physiologist

Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865)

Agatha Christie photo

Related topics