Economics: A Fragmented and Troubled Scientific Discipline? A Review of Alessandro Roncaglia’s The Age of Fragmentation: A History of Contemporary Economic Thought (2019)

This paper provides a detailed review of Alessandro Roncaglia’s book, The Age of Fragmentation: A History of Contemporary Thought, published in 2019. It is shown by Roncaglia in this book that since early in the twentieth century economic thought has fragmented into many different research fields, and into many different theoretical approaches, and yet the mainstream of contemporary economics has become progressively dominated by the marginalist approach. The review accounts for the main themes in Roncaglia’s interpretation of the development of contemporary economic thought in its many different fields and theoretical perspectives and his evaluation of their scientific contribution. A central argument of Roncaglia is that because of the fragmented nature of economics and the cultural-political factors shaping research funding of it, the history of economic thought has never been more important for communication and mutual comprehension across the discipline to ensure its intellectual health and ethical standing.