Regular reader Kevin Corcoran sent me another email that’s worth posting as a standalone blog post. Here it is:
Earlier this morning I decided to re-read Ludwig von Mises’s book Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution. (I know it’s considered bad manners to flaunt my crazy, party-hard lifestyle like this, but hey, it’s the weekend and I like to indulge.) I first read it nearly 20 years ago, and thought it was worth revisiting as I suspect I’ll be able to understand and engage with it much better this time around.
Mises begins by defending the idea of methodological dualism – the idea that the study of social sciences like economics requires a fundamentally different approach than is used in the physical sciences. He points out that physical sciences give way to regularity and prediction that simply isn’t available in social sciences. He writes “Under identical conditions stones always react to the same stimuli in the same way; we can learn something about these regular patterns of reacting, and we can make use of this knowledge in directing our actions towards definite goals…A stone is a thing that reacts in a definite way.” However, Mises argues, there is a crucial difference between the things studied by the physical sciences and the subject of social sciences – humanity. “Men react to the same stimuli in different ways, and the same man at different instants of time may react in ways different from his previous or later conduct. It is...
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