Subject of Economic Science, Methodology and Stages of Development

It was not immediately possible to determine the subject of economic science in the course of its formation and development. It is impossible to describe this concept in a few words. No short definition will reveal the essence of the phenomena of economics that are being comprehended.

The subject of economic science is determined differently by different researchers. You can specify such definitions as "activities related to exchange and money transactions," "everyday business life, during which the means of livelihood are derived and used", "people's behavior in the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods" and etc.

The complexity of determining the subject of this science is explained by the fact that economic relations are extremely complex and intertwined with each other a huge number of times, with each time pouring out into qualitatively new types of relations. They include millions of people, enterprises, industries, goods, services and prices for them.

The subject of economic science in the understanding of Western researchers is reduced to the study of phenomena and the description of economic facts: money, markets, credit relations, unemployment, inflation, demand, supply, profit, etc. In this context, the links between these phenomena, their mutual influence and interdependence are studied.

At present, more and more attention is drawn to the study of universal values, which stem from the process of the so-called natural self-regulation of life, the laws of interaction of people with nature and the material environment. This leads to the fact that the subject of economic science begins to be treated with some changes.

Since a person for his life has not yet found a source of inexhaustible resources that can be used to provide for his own vital activity, he strongly depends on what nature provides him. The limited nature of natural resources poses to society the task of selecting directions, as well as ways to use the resources that are available for a certain period. The methods of solving these problems are the subject of economic science.

The methodology of economic science is the science of its methods. At the present stage, economic science has a large set of methods used to understand economic realities. These methods have been formed since antiquity, beginning with Aristotle and Heraclitus, which laid the basis for a dialectical view of the world. This principle is still widely used by economic science in its research.

In addition, it uses such methods as the study of the processes of the economy in the interrelation of phenomena and their development, as synthesis and analysis, deduction and induction, causes and effects, delimitation of the essence and phenomena themselves, the movement of thought from the abstract to the concrete and many others.

At the same time, economic science has specific methods of research, which are determined by specific goals for the objects of scientific development. The main principle of economic science is the study of facts, and not predetermined dogmas. To do this, it uses methods of specific study, the classification of representative and reliable facts, their synthesis and analysis, and the purification of facts from accidental and inessential. Based on this, economic laws and models are derived.

Stages of development of economic science In general form can be reduced to four periods:

1. Pre-scientific development (until the 18th century)
2. The origin of economic science (1750-1870 gg.)
3. Discoveries and elaborations of the main fundamental principles of economic theory (1870-1930).
4. Modern theoretical research and development (after the 1930s).

The main stages in the development of economic thought itself are mercantilism, classical political economy (physiocrats, market school), Marxist political economy, and the economics line (neoclassicists and neo-Keynesians).