The Charge of "Atomism" in Theoretical Economics

We should like to mention another opinion particularly widespread among German economists which ultimately, like the one previously discussed, has its roots in the mechanical application of certain points of view of historical research to theoretical economics and in a one-sided outlook on the problems of the latter. It can therefore be disposed of at this point. We mean the charge of atomism which is made in modem German literature against economics in the most frivolous way, indeed against everybody who is concerned with the true problems of theoretical economics. It is supposedly based on the fact that economic phenomena theoretically are reduced ultimately to individual economic efforts or to their simplest constituent elements, and are thus explained.

--Carl Menger, Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics, ed. Louis Schneider, trans. Francis J. Nock (New York: New York University Press, 1985), 90-91.