Self-Fulfilling Science

Overview:

It is generally assumed that science is self-correcting. However, through their influence on our beliefs and actions, scientific representations can also become self-fulfilling by causing the objects of scientific investigation to increasingly resemble the scientific view of them. This (now completed) dissertation project draws on insights from the philosophy of science to shed light on this little-researched phenomenon and critically examine much-discussed claims about the self-fulfilling nature of economic theories of homo economicus.