Methodological individualism

In the social sciences, methodological individualism is the principle that subjective individual motivation explains social phenomena, rather than a collection of things sharing a common features or business dynamics which are illusory or artificial in addition to therefore cannot truly explain market or social phenomena. This concept was delivered as an given in the social sciences by Max Weber, in addition to discussed in his book Economy and Society.

Methodological individualism is often contrasted with methodological holism and methodological pluralism.

Criticisms

Economist Mark Blaug has criticized over-reliance on methodological individualism in economics, saying that "it is helpful to note what methodological individualism strictly interpreted [...] would imply for economics. In effect, it would sources out all macroeconomic propositions that cannot be reduced to microeconomic ones [...] this amounts to saying goodbye to nearly the whole of received macroeconomics. There must be something wrong with a methodological principle that has such devastating implications".

Similarly, the economist Alan Kirman has critiqued general equilibrium theory and modern economics for its "fundamentally individualistic approach to constructing economic models", and showed that an individualist competitive equilibrium is non necessarilyor unique. However, stability and uniqueness can be achieved if aggregate variables are added, and as a a thing that is caused or proposed by something else he argued "the picture that we should start at the level of the isolated individual is one which we may alive have to abandon".