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Part 1 The heritage: introduction - scope, purpose and limitations ofthis study; the philosophical background - thinkers who influenceed theclassical economists - Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the philosophy ofscience, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) - mathematical scientist, Thomas Hobbes(1588-1679) - philosophizing vs. experimentation, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) -the deductive-mathematical experimental method, John Locke (1632-1704),epistemological uncertainty and the "historical, plain method", David Hume(1711-1776) - pioneer in moral philosophy, Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) andScottish philosophy of science, Sir John F.W. Herschel (1792-1871) - modelphilosopher, William Whewell (1794-1866), gentleman of science; science in18th- and 19th-century Britain - the emergence of moral philosophy, thescience of man, the method of analysis and synthesis, the clock metaphor,social engineering and the diffusion of economic knowledge, the birth ofeconometrics; a short history of induction - Bacon's theory of induction, acloser look at Newton's third step, the myth of causality and itsconsequences, induction in the hands of the Scots, induction's heyday -Herschel, Mill and Whewell, Jevons and the decline of induction, the newapproach to induction - probability theory, Karl Popper - induction as myth.Part 2 Classical economic methodology: Adam Smith and his "Newtonian method"-the tie to Newton, departures from Newtonian method, the significance of theessay "The History of Astronomy", typing up odds and ends - other clues toSmith's method, the legitimation of science in Smith's system, lessons fortoday's economist; Malthus and Ricardo - opposing or complementary methods? -malleable scientific reputations, education and accomplishments, themethodological dialogue, significance and legacy of the Malthus-Ricardodialogue; John Stuart Mill - last of the Newtonians - the historical setting- interest in philosophy of science awakened, Mill's analysis of the methodsof natural science, the development of a method of social science, theinexact science of political economy, Mill on specific methodological issuesin political economy, Mill's place in the history and philosophy of science;concluding remarks.