Terence Hutchison received his education from Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. He taught economics at the London School of Economics and at the University of Birmingham.
Hutchison is very knowledgeable in the Methodology and History of Economics and has argued that all economic propositions can be classified as either empirical or tautological propositions, most falling in the tautological catagory. He believed that economic inquiries should be "confined to empirically testable statements." It has been his "long-standing conviction that empirical work in economics is just as usefully applied to the assumptions as to the predictions of theory." The well-known economist, Fritz Machlup, labeled Hutchison the "reluctant ultra-empiricist". Hutchison has been greatly influenced by Karl Popper's methodological prescriptions for economics.
In "on the verification of economics", Hutchison states Machlup's definition of the Ultra-Empiricist as follows:
"the essence of the ultra-empiricist position on verification: the ultra-empiricist is so distrustful of deductive systems of thought that he is not satisfied with the indirect verification of hypotheses, that is, with tests showing that the results deduced (from these hypotheses and certain factual assumptions) are in approximate correspondence with reliable observational data.In response to this, Hutchison states that "In fact Ultra-empiricists refuse to recognize the legitimacy of employing at any level of analysis propositions not independently verifiable."
Hutchision's and Machlup's doctrines on the verification of economics were very much at odds. According to Hutchison,
"Professor Machlup mentions, as a variant of the fundamental assumption, that consumers can arrange their preferences in an order....[Machlup] formulates the fundamental assumption to the effect that "people act rationally", it is not in the least clear what would constitute a test of this assumption and whether even it is testable. Not knowing how it can be tested, one cannot tell at all precisely what can be deduced from it. Nevertheless, brandishing this generalisation that all economic action was (or even must be) "rational" some economists-notably Professor Mises, whom Professor Machlup seems so concerned to defend-have proceeded to claim that wholesome political conclusions were logically deducible from it, and were thus to be regarded as established conclusions of economic science. It is not difficult to understand why those wishing to propogate sweeping political dogmas as the established logical conclusions of scientific economic theory, should resist the claim that some procedure for testing should be described for these conclusions, and/or for the assumptions, including the fundamental assumption, from which they were deduced. I am afraid that Professor Machlup's doctrines on verification and the verifiability in economics are not merely questionable in themselves as an account of the structure of micro-economic theory, but may be used in defence of a kind of politico-intellectual obscurantism that seeks to avoid not merely the empirical testing of its dogmas, but even the specification of what would constitute tests".
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