What differentiates the realm of the natural sciences from that of the sciences of human action is the categorial system resorted to in each in interpreting phenomena and constructing theories. The natural sciences do not know anything about final causes; inquiry and theorizing are entirely guided by the category of causality. The field of the sciences of human action is the orbit of purpose and of conscious aiming at ends; it is teleological.
Leonard E. Read’s classic I, Pencil stands as one of the twentieth century’s pedagogical triumphs. Thousands upon thousands of people have learned about the futility of central planning by considering the incomprehensibly complex processes that go into the production of something as mundane as a pencil. It’s also a process of cooperation that has given us the amazing visual spectacles that entertain us and that we take for granted. I’m a huge fan of the Star Wars saga, the brainchild of George Lucas. Lucas was a visionary, to be sure, but he wasn’t able to do it alone.
The press has gone wild over this Afghanistan war news: the deaths, the coverups, the slaughter, the screw ups, the lies, etc. etc. I haven’t read every bit of news on this but it seems pretty much like a fleshing out and summary of what has appeared on antiwar.com every day for many years. I’m not surprised at all. What am I missing here?
Deteriorating piano rolls can’t be preserved due to copyright law – an irony because the 1909 copyright act was passed precisely to keep piano rolls from driving live music from the market.
This health site dared defend smoking, pointing out that sugar is probably far more dangerous. Fascinating.
The post educated me about the anti-smoking hysteria of 1917.
I recently printed a small mountain of papers for my ongoing research projects about Walmart. One thing this illustrates is just how little we actually know about what we might claim to understand and be able to plan.
[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]
It is generally asserted that the history of modern industrialism and especially the history of the British “Industrial Revolution” provide an empirical verification of the “realistic” or “institutional” doctrine and utterly explode the “abstract” dogmatism of the economists.1
“I don’t think that’s very good for your blood pressure.” I was sitting on the couch feeding our newborn while my wife was bathing our two-year-old. I had flipped through the channels and had stopped on PBS, where someone was talking about how payday lenders were exploiting the poor. Liberalization: Age of Milton Friedman, also Peter Leeson’s paper. http://www.nber.org/papers/w16195.pdf
The press reports that the rich are not booking at the Four Seasons, not putting on the Ritz, and not filling their closets with furs and jewels from Saks. It gets worse.
