Conceptual Displacement: From the Natural to the Social.

This paper distinguishes between epistemological naturalism, which it supports, and ontological naturalism, which it opposes. It sketches the emergence of anti-naturalist social theory among nineteenth-century African-American intellectuals and its refinement by twentieth-century feminists. These movements challenged ontological naturalism in the social sciences by substituting social constructionist concepts of race and gender for naturalist ones. Economics awaits a similar liberation. The paper identifies four naturalist concepts-atomism, determinism and biologically determined race and gender differences--as structuring mainstream economic theory. It concludes that ontological naturalism is inconsistent with the application of the epistemology of the natural sciences to the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]