Schumpeter and the Idea of Social Science

This book is a comprehensive investigation of the work of Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950), one of the great economists of the twentieth century. In the first study of its kind, Yuichi Shionoya highlights Schumpeter’s methodological views and emphasises his ideal of a universal social science. Taking on board all aspects of his work, he reconstructs a system which encompasses theory (economic statics, economic dynamics, economic sociology) and metatheory (philosophy of science, history and sociology of science). The originality of Schumpeter’s work – which the author calls the two-structure approach to the evolution of mind and society – is examined in the light of the intellectual field in Germany and Austria in the early twentieth century. A major contribution to the history of economic thought, this book will be the standard of Schumpeter scholarship for years to come.