Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences

Thirteen years ago there appeared a translation of Carl Menger’s Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre done by James Dingwall and Bert F. Hoselitz.1 The translators’ preface could almost be repeated here verbatim, for the causes of their complaints are largely to be found also in the original of the present volume, entitled Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der Politischen Oekonomie insbesondere.

Dingwall and Hoselitz state that Menger’s book “is more than normally difficult to translate.” This is so mild that it is almost an understatement. To anyone who is at home in German, Menger’s meaning is nearly always clear. In fact, because of the repetitiousness of his style and his insistence on leaving nothing to the reader’s imagination, his meaning is unusually clear considering what may in all honesty be called the atrocity of his style of writing.

He had all the features usually associated with the verbose and involved style of the last century. One example may suffice. One paragraph in the Untersuchungen consists of thirty-eight printed lines. It also consists of only two sentences, one of twenty lines and one of eighteen. Because of grammatical features of the German language, such as agreement in grammatical gender, case forms, agreement of verb forms with subject forms, and so on, such long sentences are understandable. The translator, however, is faced with the problem of breaking up these monstrous units into smaller ones. At the same time he must keep the connections and relationships clear in a language which can do this only by position in the sentence, not by grammatical forms.

Another feature that is hard for the translator to handle is the use of certain particles in German to express slight variations in emphasis, mood, and connection. English expresses all this in a different way. The translator is thus compelled to render the force of the German statement at times without using words to do this as the original does.

Menger uses a number of words with a variation of connotation in various places. He also makes rather fine distinctions by using two different words. For example, Verkennung ordinarily would be rendered into English with “misunderstanding,” in the sense of a “misunderstanding” of the situation. However, Menger uses Missverständnis upon many occasions with an obvious shade of difference. I have therefore, in spite of its slight awkwardness, usually translated the former word with the quite correct meaning “failure to recognize.”

This matter is further complicated by Menger’s use of words of Latin or Greek origin side by side with native German ones. It does not offer a great problem when he uses Erscheinung and Phänomen interchangeably and then also uses the former to mean “(putting in) an appearance.” He regularly seems to use Volkswirtschaftslehre (to keep his spelling) and Nationalökonomie interchangeably. For instance, in the first paragraph of Appendix IV he writes “Theoretische Volkswirthschaftslehre (theoretische Nationalökonomie).” Consequently I have translated both words with “economics.” Yet I cannot avoid the feeling that he may have had a slight shade of difference in mind when he switched from one to the other, although I can recall no instance where he uses them side by side to indicate a difference.

But with Politische Oekonomie (again keeping his spelling) he obviously means something else. It embraces, as he states many times, “economics,” “economic policy,” and “science of finance.” I have kept his distinction by rendering this with “political economy.” The 1910 edition of Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, which I happened to have at hand, gives a long discussion of Volkswirtschaftslehre, and for Politische Ökonomie and Nationalökonomie simply refers the reader to the article on Volkswirtschaftslehre. Thus Menger makes a distinction which more modern German does not make, and which the English translations do not make.

Volkswirthschaft I have translated with “economy,” except in those instances where a distinction had to be made clear. In a few places Menger wrote of Wirthschaft and of Volkswirthschaft. Then I used “economy” and “national economy” for these.

Certain words that Menger used have English translations which have, however, changed to a greater or lesser extent. To translate Wissenschaft with “field of knowledge” or “branch of knowledge” was hopelessly unwieldy, considering how often Menger used it. “Discipline” was not very satisfactory in most places. I finally gave up and used the English word “science.” Similarly, though fortunately not so frequently, I was confronted with Politik and Politiker. For these I used “politics” and, upon occasion, “politician.” “Political scientist,” which I could use for the student of the science of government, did not apply to the person practicing the science or art of government.

I quickly recognized that all these things, and others, meant that the translator would have to fight his way through this forest of difficulties and arrive at a fairly faithful translation, simply trying to do this in English reasonably acceptable to a reader of this age. Or else he would have to do a complete paraphrase, simply giving Menger’s ideas in his own language. Two things made me avoid the second alternative. For one thing, I have seen too many paraphrases in which not only the author’s language was changed, but his ideas were, too. It is too dangerous a procedure. Tying in with this is the second consideration. To do such a paraphrase the person must be thoroughly at home in the field, not just in the language. As I am not an economist, I did not feel remotely justified in trying it.

One last item. After some debate with myself I decided to keep Menger’s references as he gave them, with all his inconsistencies (but some concessions have had to be made to current printing conventions). I translated, of course, whenever possible, except for titles. In connection with the titles I decided to keep Menger’s archaic spellings, for actually most, if not all, of the works are so listed in catalogs and the like.

My thanks are due to my colleague Professor Louis Schneider. He first suggested that the work should be done. He has aided me repeatedly on the technical vocabulary, and has also read the whole manuscript critically. The translation is basically my work, but because of circumstances that neither of us could help it was necessary for him to put finishing touches on it.

For this translation I used the first and sole edition of the work, published in 1883 by Duncker and Humblot in Leipzig. As Professor Schneider indicates in his Introduction, the London School of Economics issue of the Untersuchungen in 1933 was simply a reprint.

FRANCIS J. NOCK

University of Illinois

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2Carl Menger, Principles of Economics (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1950), translated and edited by James Dingwall and Bert F. Hoselitz, with an introduction by Frank H. Knight.

• 1Beside the present work the only examples that come to mind of works translated into English after eighty years are both classics: Richard Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General (1752) in 1933, and Hermann Heinrich Gossen, Entwickelung der Gesetze des Menschlichen Verkehrs (1845) in 1983.
• 2It is a rare book in economics that deserves to be translated into English as much as eighty years after its initial publication. The book that actually receives such attention after so many years almost ipso facto qualifies as a classic. Carl Menger’s Untersuchungen uber die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der Politischen Oekonomie Insbesondere of 1883 clearly merited the translation that it finally received in 1963 (under the title Problems of Economics and Sociology), for there is no doubt about its preeminence as a treatment of vital methodological issues in economics. When this translation fell out of print in recent years, the Institute for Humane Studies and the New York University Press became naturally eager to reissue it as part of their series of Studies in Economic Theory. This series includes the 1981 edition of Menger’s only other book-length work, Principles of Economics, which was first published in 1871. Thus the Investigations takes its well-deserved place alongside the Principles as a classic of economic thought enjoying a second century of life in a new language.