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Investigación económica
Print version ISSN 0185-1667
Inv. Econ vol.62 n.245 Ciudad de México Jul./Sep. 2003
Artículos
El problema de la especificidad histórica
The Problem of Historical Specificity
Traducción:
* Universidad de Hertfordshire, Inglaterra. E-mail: g.m.hodgson@herts.ac.uk
Todo sistema económico, ser humano u organismo complejo tiene su historia. El estudio de las sociedades ha llevado a la búsqueda de teorías generales que tratan de unificar la historia misma. Dicha unificación requiere de principios y formulaciones generales que expliquen los mecanismos causales de la historia. Sin embargo, la elaboración de una verdadera teoría general de fenómenos complejos puede verse entorpecida por severos problemas de tratabilidad. Por esta razón, las teorías generales han caído siempre en simplificaciones en su intento por explicar hechos reales. ¿Cuál es la causa de ello? A juicio del presente autor, estas teorías plantean conjeturas muy fuertes y asumen que todo se comporta de la misma forma. De tal manera que las teorías generales resultan ser de un valor explicativo muy limitado, conduciendo al denominado el problema de la especificidad histórica. Este trabajo estudia los intentos que se han hecho en economía para desarrollar teorías generales, considerando que aún la unificación misma tiene ciertos límites.
Every economic system, human being or complex organism has its own history. Studying the different societies has led to a search for general theories that try to unify the history itself. Said unification requires general principles and formulations to explain the causative mechanisms behind any such history. However, devising a real general theory about complex phenomena is bound to become bogged down in severe problems to do with the handling of a given phenomenon. That is why general theories have always tended towards simplifications in their attempts to explain true facts. What is the reason for this? In this author' s opinion, these theories suggest very firm conjectures and then assume that everything behaves in the same way. The result is that general theories are limited in their explanatory value, leading to the so-called problem of historical specificity. This paper studies attempts made in economics to develop general theories, taking into consideration the fact that even unification itself has certain limits.
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Recibido: 12 de Mayo de 2003; Aprobado: Junio de 2003
Este es un artículo publicado en acceso abierto bajo una licencia Creative Commons
