The methodological individualism antidotes to poisons of the conspiracy theory of history and social sciences

Many sociologists and economists seem to share the objections raised in the article by Calance et al. (2014), which offers the difference between cospiratorial thinking and conspiratorial reasoning. According to the autors, conspiratorial reasoning is misleaded by two mistakes typical of methodological individualism: 1) fail to take into account in its analysis all the facts, including conspirators’plans and that are indeed successful and 2) not adequately consider reasons and purposes as determinants of human action. We must respond as follows. 1) Only a tiny minority of social and institutional phenomena are the result of conspiracies and projects: more commonly social and economic structures are the unanticiped, and in some case unpredictable, result of human interaction. According to the Austrian school of methodological individualism, the main task , if not exclusive task, of social sciences is to analyze these unitended effects. 2) Reasons, purposes, interest certainly weigh on human actions, but they cannot be investigated and interpreted according to a specific view. What social scientists can analyse is only the congruence between means and ends (i.e. the problem of “instrumental” rationality).