Economics and interdisciplinarity: an open-systems approach

Abstract

absTracT : This is a text on economics and interdisciplinarity. It takes account of the plurality of meanings that the practice of interdisciplinarity has assumed in economics, discusses why interdisciplinarity is essential to the study of the economy and analyzes two models of what interdisciplinarity should be in economics. reference is also made to the obstacles inherent in the practice of interdisciplinarity. Its ultimate goal is to show why the economy (as an object of study), being an open system, cannot be left to economists alone requiring, instead, a pluralistic, political economy understanding of the ‘economic’. Keywords : economics; interdisciplinarity; open systems; connections; pluralism.Jel classification: a12; b4. INTroducTIoNThe relationship that economics establishes with “contiguous” disciplines is fundamental to understand the nature of economics itself. discussing that rela-tionship entails thinking the definition of the boundaries and connections that we 1 This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for science and Technology, strategic Project [uId/soc/50012/2013]