14 Facts About Tony Lawson

Tony Lawson is professor of economics and philosophy in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge.

Tony Lawson is a co-editor of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, a former director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, and co-founder of the Cambridge Realist Workshop and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group.

Tony Lawson argues repeatedly that if social science is to be successful then it must fashion methods that are appropriate to its subject matter.

Tony Lawson argues that this requires an explicit orientation to social ontology.

Tony Lawson develops dialectical methods that he systematises as contrast explanation.

Tony Lawson has argued that the notion of a neoclassical economics is not coherent.

Tony Lawson argues that this incompatibility of commitments lives on today, albeit largely unnoticed, not least in many economic modellers.

Tony Lawson has developed a conception of the human individual person that, in contrast to the isolated atom of most of modern economics, always stands within a multitude of social relations.

Indeed, Tony Lawson's conception turns out to qualify as a quantum social theory itself, but does so without losing sight of human subjectivity, relational depth, or giving up on explanatory power.

Indeed, in his early work, Tony Lawson joined Bhaskar and others in referring to the account of social reality defended as critical realism.

Since 1997 Tony Lawson has developed his own conception of social ontology, largely in collaboration with the Cambridge Social Ontology Group.

Tony Lawson defends a conception of ethics named Critical Ethical Naturalism in which the goal is a society in which we all flourish in our differences, and the mechanism ever nudging us towards it turns on the fact that the flourishing of any one of us depends on the flourishing of all and at some level we all recognise this.

Tony Lawson has engaged in numerous debates with various contributors, many of which are published, including, early on, over the use of econometrics and indeed mathematical economic modelling of any sort as practiced, and later, regarding the value of ontology to social theorising, including to feminist theorising.

Recently Tony Lawson has debated the relative advantages of competing conceptions of social ontology with several ontologists such as John Searle, Doug Porpora and Colin Wight.