Methodological Individualism

7 Popperian methodologicalindividualismMethodological individualism was until quite recently – before the renaissance ofAustrian Economics – most often associated with the name of Karl Popper. This,as we have seen, is not because he was its inventor. Nor is it, as we shall see,because he has very much to say about it that is entirely new. Popper did bringabout a major change in methodological individualism by advocating institutionalism,but he did not integrate this element in methodological individualism,himself. One reason methodological individualism used to be more often associatedwith Popper than with the Austrians, is that, being a philosopher himself,Popper was more widely read among philosophers. Another reason is that, in thedecades after the Second World War, he was probably also more widely read bysocial scientists, than were Weber, Mises and Hayek, whose influence was largelyconfined to their own disciplines of economics and sociology. Today this is nolonger true. Interest in the philosophy of Karl Popper has been on the waneamong social scientists for some time, while interest in Austrian Economics hasincreased. My conjecture is, however, that we will soon see a revival of interestalso in the philosophy of Karl Popper.Karl PopperPopper, then, was not an ‘Austrian’ in his methodology for the social sciences. Hewas, however, an Austrian by birth and, what is more, he was a student ofLudwig von Mises and a friend of Friedrich von Hayek. This fact alone makesfor a certain continuity between Austrian and Popperian methodological individualism.More important, however, is the fact that Popper read an early version ofThe Poverty of Historicism at Hayek’s private seminar in London in 1936. In his‘Intellectual Biography’, Popper also tells us that Hayek ‘saved his life’ twice.First, by helping him to find a publisher for The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)and by writing most encouragingly about it. Second, by offering him a readershipat the University of London, tenable at the London School of Economics,and by publishing ‘The Poverty of Historicism’ as an article in Economica(1944–5), for which Hayek was then acting editor (Popper, 1974a: 95; 1976: 120).When Popper takes up the subject of methodological individualism in The Poverty