Epistemology of finance is a broad field of study that aims at providing a conceptual framework(s) for the interpretation of mathematical models in finance as well as the study of their possible limitations, in order to determine the epistemological standards according to which financial theory should be assessed against any associated empirical reality. A key problem is to what extent the combination of self-reference and adaption (reflexivity) undermine the stability, uniqueness, and usefulness of predictive models in finance and economics.
Within applied financial disciplines (which subsume financial economics, quantitative, and statistical finance) a single common assumption is pervasive; namely, that capital markets, being social systems, adhere sufficiently to epistemic norms. It has been argued that the use of incorrect epistemological assumptions is pervasive in financial economics and economics. These assumed epistemic norms carry with them a priori the necessity of unique, well-defined causal chains that can be meaningfully extracted from data. Both heterodox and mainstream economics retain the view that causality remains relevant as a formalism and that models remain sufficiently stable and unique (including under self-reference) and for this reason typically characterize empirical finance as science.