Forschungsfeld III: Revisiting and restoring Keynes’s scientific revolution

John Maynard Keynes was confident he had written something that would revolutionize the way the world thinks about economics when he published his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936. Since then, the economic community has speculated about what exactly Keynes had in mind with this bold claim. Did he envision a true paradigm shift in the sense later defined by Thomas Kuhn, who conceptualized scientific revolutions two decades afterward? Or was Keynes merely proposing a shift from microeconomic to macroeconomic analysis? Perhaps he intended a short-period analysis in contrast to long-period general equilibrium theorizing.

Keynes anticipated that many economists would either outright reject his ideas or dismiss them as nothing fundamentally new. In this, he accurately predicted the kind of intellectual resistance that Ludwik Fleck described as a typical reaction to scientific innovation — the tendency to cling to a dominant paradigm or "thought style" when faced with a theory that challenges established norms.
From this, it can be inferred that Keynes was aware of the resistance and attempts to transform and adapt his new ideas would face, as well as his own inability to be clear and outspoken enough to prevent this from happening.

This research area is not concerned with discovering what Keynes really meant—that task can be left to historians of economic thought. Instead, the purpose is to keep Keynes’s vision alive of providing a new paradigmatic approach intended to replace standard economics—also known as neoclassical economics—as the mainstream paradigm. This, of course, includes developing a new body of formal analysis, which can be seen as yet another interpretation of Keynes. However, it also requires acknowledging that Keynes, as the first to take a truly new intellectual path, may not have gotten everything right or may not have been able to completely disentangle himself from old ways of thinking. Therefore, following in Keynes’s footsteps and reiterating his revolutionary message does not imply exegetical rigor.

Forschungsergebnisse:

Heise, Arne, 2019. “Post-Keynesian Economics – Challenging theNeo-Classical Mainstream”, Efil Journal of Economic Research, 8(2) pages 30 - 51 

Heise, Arne, 2022. "The Incommensurability of Keynes's and Walrasian Economics and the Unsuccessful Escape from Old Ideas," Economic Thought, World Economics Association, 10(2), pages 12-19

Heise, Arne, 2023. "A Keynesian–Minskian perspective on the transformation of industrial into financial capitalism," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 33(4), pages 963-990

Heise, Arne, 2024a. "Keynes and the drunkard under the lamp post: Making sense of Palley," The Japanese Political Economy, 50(1), pages 47-62

Heise, Arne, 2024b. "Keynes, Kalecki and Minsky - Post Keynesian champions in comparison or: Joining forces, horses for courses or the necessity of discrimination?," ZÖSS-Discussion Papers 108, University of Hamburg, Centre for Economic and Sociological Studies