Realism from the 'lands of Kaleva'

An interview with Uskali Mäki

Authors

  • Uskali Mäki University of Helsinki, Finland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23941/ejpe.v1i1.16

Keywords:

Uskali Maki, interview, methodology, philosophy of economics, realism, economic models

Abstract

The Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics is pleased to present this interview with Professor Mäki, in which he offers some reflections on the aims, current situation, and prospects of the field, as well as on the development of his own thought about the philosophy and methodology of economics.

Author Biography

Uskali Mäki, University of Helsinki, Finland

Uskali Mäki (Helsinki, 1951) is a philosopher of science and a social scientist, and one of the forerunners of the strong wave of research on the philosophy and methodology of economics that has been expanding during the last three  decades. His research interests and academic contributions cover many topics in the philosophy of economics, such as realism and realisticness, idealisation, scientific modelling, causation, explanation, rhetoric, the sociology and economics of economics, and the foundations of new institutional and Austrian economics. He is a co-editor of The handbook of economic methodology (1998); Economics and methodology: crossing boundaries (1998); Rationality, institutions and economic methodology (1993). And the editor of two compilations of essays  that have become highly influential to the shaping of the field: The economic world view: studies in the ontology of economics (2001), and Fact and fiction in  economics: realism, models, and social construction (2002).

Currently, Uskali Mäki is academy professor at the Academy of Finland. He is also director of the project Trends and Tensions of Intellectual Integration (TINT), based at the department of social and moral philosophy, University of Helsinki. Before settling in Helsinki, he was professor of philosophy of science at Erasmus University Rotterdam from 1995 to 2006, where he was academic director of the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE) since its foundation in 1997. He was co-editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology  from 1996 to 2005; founding member, executive board member, and from 2007 to 2008, Chair of the International Network for Economic Method (INEM); and has been a research area coordinator for the European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy since 1992.

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Published

2008-12-16

How to Cite

Mäki, U. (2008). Realism from the ’lands of Kaleva’: An interview with Uskali Mäki. Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 1(1), 124–146. https://doi.org/10.23941/ejpe.v1i1.16

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2008): Autumn 2008

Section

Interviews