Paul Samuelson's Mach

AbstractThis final chapter analyzes Samuelson's methodology through the work of the physicist, psychologist, and philosopher Ernst Mach, categorizing Mach's thoughts with a big ‘M’. Thoughts of Mach range from sensory observation to phenomenology, including other disciplines such as psychology to the extent that such disciplinary thoughts are in harmony with the stability of the concept. The chapter ventures that Samuelson's methodology arises from the consideration of many views of science. Faced with a blurred distinction between facts and theory, which highlighted by Orman Quine, and the argument that economics deals with the world of social phenomena, Samuelson maintains firm feet in reality, letting the facts tell their story. Samuelson also acknowledges that new thoughts such as Thomas Kuhn's paradigm regarding the notions of cumulative knowledge, and incommensurability contribute to the theory of science. He accepted that facts are numerous and therefore must be carefully sampled for their economy. Yet Samuelson maintains that we should be able to tell the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of things and phenomena of the economic world.