Abstract

Joan Robinson took an anti-scientific approach to methodology and philosophy of science.Her belief was that Keynes’s models (which she misrepresented as being R. Kahn’s models) were TRUE models while the classical and neoclassical models were FALSE models. This showed up again in the early 1950’s in the useless and sterile controversy about the neoclassical aggregate production function model. Joan Robinson believed that this was a FALSE model . Apparently, her opponents believed it was a TRUE model. The only relevant question, from a scientific point of view, is the question “Is this model useful or not in helping to explain the phenomenon under investigation?” Asking this question would have put an end to this so called “debate” before it surfaced and ended up being published in economics journals. Of course, Keynes NEVER believed that models are either true or false. Models are useful, but they are, at best, only approximations to reality. Therefore, a model can’t be true or false; it can be better or worse than other models or an improved, better version of an existing model. The goal in economic science is to continually come up with useful models that were better than previous models or improved versions of older models, so that more of reality could be more accurately explained, as demonstrated by Keynes’s IS-LM model on pp.298-299 of the General Theory.

Keywords: Uncertainty, Liquidity preference theory of the rate of interest, IS-LM model, D-Z model, models, Robinson, Ramsey