Chapter 1: Introduction to Essays on Economic Psychology

Abstract

Problems to be solved in people's personal and social lives usually do not fit the boundaries of scientiic disciplines well even if the development of those disci- plines originally was stimulated by difficulties in providing food and shelter, se- curing health, protecting against crimes, strengthening the national power, facili- tating trade and commerce, making sense ofhuman life, etc. Disciplines in natural and social sciences, although at the beginning often installed and promoted primar- ily by practical needs, tend soon to narrow their scope in order to get a deeper the- oreical understanding of segments of all too complex reality, or in order to de- velop a specialized technology for improving some components of the people's situation, irrespective of their interdependence with all the other components.