System approach in the research of economic processes

The peculiarities of cognition of the economic life of society at the dawn of civilization coincided with the general philosophical worldview, uniting the entire process of cognition - the only setting for the study of the essence of the surrounding world dominated. The need to isolate from the general secret of the nature of the laws of the functioning of the economy stemmed from the course of human development and is associated with the appearance of a surplus product. As soon as a person learned to produce more of what he needed, the cognitive function of philosophy increased significantly.

The selection of the economy as an object of knowledge is not accidental. The very concept of economics emerged only after economic life as an objective phenomenon emerged as an independent subsystem of society: “... in early societies, the economic process is institutionalized through kinship relations, marriage, age groups, secret societies, totem associations and social celebrations. The term “economic life” has no obvious meaning here. People's views on the origin and nature of economic knowledge were shaped under the influence of general scientific standards based on the experience of leading science. At different times this role was played by mathematics, astronomy, theoretical physics, and biology. Therefore, the initial postulates of economic theory have different origins. They reflect everyday experience, are borrowed from the philosophical picture of the world, religious ideas, and are accepted as a simplified representation of economic reality. The element of conventionality inherent in them is reflected even in those categories and concepts that seem quite obvious. Therefore, there are no absolutely reliable theories. Over time, a theoretical model appeared as a working tool of economists, with the help of which theoretical concepts and reality began to relate to each other, establishing connections and relationships between them, which presumably correspond to the connections and relationships of the real world.

This fact has acquired significant logical significance for the development of the theory. In economics, a wide range of models are used: verbal (the simplest metaphors, analogies, verbal schemes), mental (used in scientific reasoning), experimental (to carry out an experiment), mathematical (to describe a possible situation) and computer simulation (to construct an image of reality). The first economic model was the “Economic Table” by F. Quesnay, which reflected the circulation of the social product. It is believed to be based on a metaphor for circulation. In modern economic theory, the role of mathematical models is increasing, the task of which is to trace the complex relationships between parameters and variables. Models-approximations are used that display reality close to the original and model-caricatures to reveal individual characteristics of objective reality. An example of a cartoon model is a market model with zero transaction costs. Economic theory as a scientific discipline developed in Western Europe in the 18th century. based, firstly, on the generalization of ideas and experience of the era of mercantilism; secondly, under the influence of the ideal of science, which in the Age of Enlightenment relied on the successes and experience of classical mechanics. In this regard, two different models of a new science - political economy were proposed. The representative of the first direction was D. Stewart ("Principles of the Study of Political Economy", 1867), the second - A. Smith ("Investigation of the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", 1776).

• D. Stewart's concept was based on three principles: 1) human nature (priority of self-interest); 2) history (the variability of the economic theory of natural, geopolitical, cultural conditions); 3) the type of social system (model of interaction between the first two principles). D. Stewart's approach allowed for different subordination of basic principles and, accordingly, the existence of different economic systems, while leaving room for the manifestation of the will of the ruler. In his figurative expression, Smith's scientific ideal was Newtonian physics. In the impermanence and diversity of economic phenomena, Smith looked for a common nature. The expression of the true nature of the economy, he considered the trajectory of economic growth (“natural” state), which serves as an axis of attraction in the oscillatory movement of real national economic processes. For Smith, the theory was a characteristic of the economy in its purest form, as a perfectly oiled clockwork: “Human society, viewed from an abstract and philosophical point of view, can be compared to a huge machine, the correct and coordinated movements of which give a lot of useful results.”

This is his approach radically different from Stewart's approach, which aimed at covering the object in all its complexity. This circumstance contributed to the fact that the crystallization of ideas about the economy as an object of theoretical knowledge went along two lines:

• 1)    around material wealth;

• 2)    around the behavior of people, motivated exclusively by their private interests.

The concept of pictures of economic reality is not a teaching about the economic world as such, but only about its representation in scientific theories and models. Each picture of economic reality has its own empirical base and its own methods of studying it. Thus, the product picture of economic reality is oriented towards macroeconomics, work with macroeconomic data. Behavioral, on the contrary, focuses on the micro level, its prerogative is associated with the study of the choice of economic agents based on their expectations, preferences, assessments of probable outcomes, decisions made. If the same phenomena are considered in the context of different pictures of economic reality, they receive, as a rule, alternative, contextually conditioned, interpretations. For example, market prices can be presented not only as the ratio of labor costs (productionproduct picture of economic reality), but also as a contract that balances the supply and demand of the parties (behavioral picture of economic reality).

The growing interest in the institutional direction of economic theory in recent years has generated an institutional picture of economic reality. In its plane, price appears as a social norm of exchange. By itself, reliance on a certain picture of economic reality does not imply isolation in the corresponding subject field, because economic processes are composed of human actions, and these actions are consistent with material and institutional conditions, as a result, the overall result is expressed in a certain set of goods that satisfy human needs. The choice of this or that picture of economic reality in the implementation of economic analysis is the choice of the angle of consideration of the object: what is taken as prerequisites, how parameters and variables are distinguished, etc. “Economics is not a science in the same sense in which acoustics is spoken of as a science, but rather a science in the sense in which 'medicine' is considered to be - a cluster of poorly coordinated and intersecting fields of knowledge.” Therefore, the presence of various pictures of economic reality is an integral feature of modern economic theory, reflecting the multidimensional nature of the economy as an object of cognition, expressed in the expansion of the spectrum of theoretical searches. Economic theory for all occasions may not exist.