'Austrian Economics as Affirmative Science' - '..the exact theoretical social sciences..'<blockquote>'Complex phenomena in the production of which various causal chains are interlaced cannot test any theory. Such phenomena, on the contrary, become intelligible only through interpretation in terms of theories previously developed from other sources.'
- Ludwig von Mises [1], page 53
'...Menger had distinguished between the realm of necessary phenomena governed by exact laws, the search for which was the primary task of science, and the rest of the world in which we might happen to find some empirical regularities. Interesting as these latter may be, the search for them and their testing can be no more than a secondary task of science...'
- Ludwig M. Lachmann, Ludwig von Mises and the Extension of Subjectivism [1], page 37
'The methodological writings of Austrian economists have rarely been properly understood. This communication failure has in part been due to the somewhat eccentric terminology of the Austrians and in part to the almost universal sway that naive falsificationism has had among some economic methodologists...'
- Mario J. Rizzo, Mises and Lakatos: A Reformulation of Austrian Methodology [1], page 53
Note[1]
Method, Process, and Austrian Economics