Towards a systemic analysis of the theory production in social sciences - the case of political economy

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is the study of the conditions for building up a diagram of the theoretical production of contemporary economy, a formally similar objective to the one of an historical study of economic theory. The author makes an attempt to develop experimentally such conditions, by stressing their possible main differences from other modes of historical analysis of a disciplinary production, while based on such concepts as that of matrix or theoretical nucleus and on several main lines of the general theory of systems. Finally and still within the experimental attitude of the whole work, an attempt is made to issue some of the conclusions attained as a first hypothesis of a matricial chart of the present economic theory.