It is hard to find an article in the past century more influential in economic methodology than Milton Friedman’s “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” Its significance lies not in presenting groundbreaking new ideas but in its power to organize and articulate existing ones that had already been shaping the subconscious of many economists. Since its publication in 1953, this essay has become a cornerstone of mainstream economic methodology—a mainstream economic “bible” of sorts.
However, there is a surprising twist: Friedman himself later regretted writing it. This revelation was as shocking to me as it might be to you. I first came across this claim while reading Deirdre McCloskey’s Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neo-Institutionalism in Economics. On page 60, McCloskey writes: “I have said, in Samuelson’s PhD thesis (1941) and in Friedman’s ‘The Methodology of Positive Economics’ (1953)—a paper, Friedman told me, that he later regretted.”
Shocked by this, I delved deeper. To gain clarity, I reached out to Deirdre McCloskey herself and asked her about the context of Friedman’s regret. Here’s how she recounted it during our interview:
Mani Basharzad: You mention that Friedman once told you he regretted writing his article “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” a piece that has since become almost a bible of economic methodology. Could you elaborate on that?
Deirdre McCloskey: It wasn’t a conversation—it was a comment in a letter he wrote to me, praising my article from 1993, which I think was called “The Rhetoric of Economics.” In that article and in subsequent books, I tried to show economists that the philosophy, history, and sociology of science don’t support the naïve positivist formula that both Samuelson and Friedman advanced. It’s important to remember that Samuelson was making similar claims at the time. For some reason, though, Friedman’s article became more famous.
This was a striking admission, particularly because it is absent from Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative, his most recent biography, as well as his earlier ones. While Friedman never made a public statement about this regret, McCloskey’s account suggests he may have been dissatisfied with the consequences of the methodological tradition he helped establish.
In his later years, Friedman’s intellectual interests seemed to shift. He grew closer to economists like Friedrich Hayek, whose methodological views often diverged from the mainstream. While Friedman acknowledged the utility of mathematical tools in economic analysis, he was never as fervent a champion of formalism as Paul Samuelson was.
Regardless of Friedman’s personal reflections, the tradition of methodological instrumentalism that his essay solidified continues to shape economics today. His legacy is a reminder that even the most influential thinkers can grapple with the unintended consequences of their ideas.
By Mani Basharzad