Chase
12-15-2009, 05:03 AM
In light of the problems with our economy and the climate change craze, I wanted to point people who haven't read it yet to Hayek's Nobel prize speech, The Pretence of Knowledge (http://mises.org/story/3229). I reread the speech and it is one of the most concise and lucid reminders of the limits of science. All non-Austrian economists (all significant non-Austrian schools are positivist, if I'm not mistaken) should read this, as well as AGW activist/alarmists.
Rather than reproduce it all here, here are a few of my favorite quotes:
There may be few instances in which the superstition that only measurable magnitudes can be important has done positive harm in the economic field: but the present inflation and employment problems are a very serious one. Its effect has been that what is probably the true cause of extensive unemployment has been disregarded by the scientistically minded majority of economists, because its operation could not be confirmed by directly observable relations between measurable magnitudes, and that an almost exclusive concentration on quantitatively measurable surface phenomena has produced a policy which has made matters worse.
"To entrust to science … more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects."
... But it is by no means only in the field of economics that far-reaching claims are made on behalf of a more scientific direction of all human activities and the desirability of replacing spontaneous processes by "conscious human control." If I am not mistaken, psychology, psychiatry, and some branches of sociology, not to speak about the so-called philosophy of history, are even more affected by what I have called the scientistic prejudice, and by specious claims of what science can achieve.
If we are to safeguard the reputation of science … much effort will have to be directed toward debunking such arrogations, some of which have by now become the vested interests of established university departments.
The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.
Rather than reproduce it all here, here are a few of my favorite quotes:
There may be few instances in which the superstition that only measurable magnitudes can be important has done positive harm in the economic field: but the present inflation and employment problems are a very serious one. Its effect has been that what is probably the true cause of extensive unemployment has been disregarded by the scientistically minded majority of economists, because its operation could not be confirmed by directly observable relations between measurable magnitudes, and that an almost exclusive concentration on quantitatively measurable surface phenomena has produced a policy which has made matters worse.
"To entrust to science … more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects."
... But it is by no means only in the field of economics that far-reaching claims are made on behalf of a more scientific direction of all human activities and the desirability of replacing spontaneous processes by "conscious human control." If I am not mistaken, psychology, psychiatry, and some branches of sociology, not to speak about the so-called philosophy of history, are even more affected by what I have called the scientistic prejudice, and by specious claims of what science can achieve.
If we are to safeguard the reputation of science … much effort will have to be directed toward debunking such arrogations, some of which have by now become the vested interests of established university departments.
The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.