ECONOMIC

Controversies

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Joseph Edward Paul Melville
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Controversies

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD

Copyright © 2011 Ludwig von Mises Institute and published under the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Published by Ludwig von Mises Institute
518 West Magnolia Avenue
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Mises.org

ISBN: 978-1-933550-96-1

Introduction

It was nearly forty years ago that Murray Rothbard changed my life. I was then a PhD candidate in economics at the New School for Social Research in downtown Manhattan, while also teaching Principles courses at a local university. And I was rapidly losing interest in the whole subject.

Section One

Method

1

The Mantle of Science

In our proper condemnation of scientism in the study of man, we should not make the mistake of dismissing science as well. For if we do so, we credit scientism too highly and accept at face value its claim to be the one and only scientific method. If scientism is, as we believe it to be, an improper method, then it cannot be truly scientific. Science, after all, means scientia, correct knowledge; it is older and wiser than the positivist-pragmatist attempt to monopolize the term.

2

What is the Proper Way to Study Man?

If the proper study of mankind is man, the question immediately arises: what is the proper way to study man? In recent generations, the enormous prestige gained by physics in advancing our knowledge of the material world has led to the uncritical transfer of the methods appropriate in the natural sciences to the study of actions of men.

3

Praxeology as the Method of the Social Sciences

THE PRAXEOLOGICAL METHOD

During the past generation, a veritable revolution has taken place in the discipline of economics. I am referring not so much to the well-known Keynesian revolution, but to the quieter yet more profound revolution in the methodology of the discipline. This change has not occurred simply in the formal writings of the handful of conscious methodologists; it has spread, largely unnoticed, until it now permeates research and study in all parts of the field.

4

Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics

Praxeology is the distinctive methodology of the Austrian School.