Extraordinary Essay by Rothbard, new on Mises.org
Praxeology as the Method of the Social Sciences, Murray N. Rothbard (1973)
During the past generation, a veritable revolution has taken place in the discipline of economics. I am referring not so much to the well-known Keynesian revolution, but to the quieter yet more profound revolution in the methodology of the discipline. This change has not occurred simply in the formal writings of the handful of conscious methodologists; it has spread, largely unnoticed, until it now permeates research and study in all parts of the field. Some effects of this methodological revolution are all too apparent. Let the nonspecialist in economics pick up a journal article or monograph today and contrast it with one of a generation ago, and the first thing that will strike him is the incomprehensibility of the modern product. The older work was written in ordinary language and, with moderate effort, was comprehensible to the layman; the current work is virtually all mathematics, algebraic or geometric. As one distinguished economist lamented, "Economics nowadays often seems like a third-rate sub-branch of mathematics," and one, he added, that the mathematician himself does not esteem very highly.
Comments (11)
Phillip Conti
Ludwig von Mises commented in Human Action that economics was just one branch of praexology. I havent seen much effort to describe praexology in his terminology in other social sciences. Anyone else care to comment on this? Am I totally off base here?
Published: November 17, 2005 11:13 AM
Casey Khan
Can anyone give a good definition of the word "verstehende"? Rothbard uses this word continuously throughout the essay.
Published: November 17, 2005 4:08 PM
Paul Edwards
The introduction above reminded me of a second year economics class i took as an elective while studying engineering.
"As one distinguished economist lamented, "Economics nowadays often seems like a third-rate sub-branch of mathematics," and one, he added, that the mathematician himself does not esteem very highly."
I recall in that class, the instructor's strange belaboring of the fact that the slope of the supply and demand curves could be expressed as dx/dy. Yeah i didn't enjoy second year economics like i thought i was going to. It's funny how life circles around and you look at an event from the other side so many years later.
Published: November 17, 2005 5:30 PM
jeffrey
Casey, it roughly translated as "understanding" but its meaning is drawn from the phenomenological tradition and it refers to the understanding one gains from internal reflection: perceptions about the world drawn from what we know about ourselves. Someone tell me if I'm wrong.
Published: November 17, 2005 5:40 PM
Justin Ptak
Verstehen, in German, means "to understand," and verstehende is the adjective form, "understanding."
Rothbard discusses Alfred Schutz's ideas when he brings up the notion of verstehen and defines it as "interpretive understanding."
I've seen verstehende used in Max Weber's work in the phrase "verstehende soziologie" and translated as "interpretive sociology" as well as in Werner Sombart's notion of a "verstehende Nationalokonomie."
Richard Swedberg has a paper on what he calls Weber's interpretive (verstehende) economic sociology (Hayek is cited favorably for what it is worth).
Published: November 17, 2005 5:48 PM
Justin
Jeff beat me to it.
Published: November 17, 2005 5:54 PM
Georgist
Quick semi-relevant question: can anyone explain the difference between Verteshen and Verstand?
Published: November 17, 2005 7:05 PM
J
I am not fluent in German, but I believe "verstand" translates into "understood."
Published: November 17, 2005 8:05 PM
averros
Rothbard is being too kind to "mathematical" economics saying that most mathematicans consider it a second-rate branch of mathematics.
Any real mathematican, of course, understands that there are non-additive quantities and that *any* statement supported by arguments involving comparison, averaging, summation, etc, of such entities is invalid (just like any calculation involving division by zero). This also means that statistics cannot be done over such quantities.
Given that utilities (being subjective human feelings) are demonstrably non-additive, any attempt to apply any kind of statistical argument or calculation to them is a priori invalid. One does not need to go into details of such arguments more than to go into details of construction of perpetum mobiles to dismiss them as false or fradulent.
This, basically, is an elaborate way of stating that all modern "mathematical" economics is pure unadulterated junk.
Published: November 17, 2005 8:29 PM
Georgist
J - "verstanden" (uncapitalized) is "understood". Verstand means something else, like "reason" (in the sense of capability of reasoning).
I wonder because it fits into this cool rhyme I thought of:
Loehne der Arbeit, Zinsen der Zeit, Miete des Landes, Profit des Verstandes. (Wages of labor, interest of time, rent of land, profit of mind [reason].)
Published: November 17, 2005 9:09 PM
JEFFREY L. HALE
Well, what if Weber intended Verstehen to mean
"to COMPREHEND" (vs. "to UNDERSTAND")? And
what if comprehension was intended to indicate a
method of all-encompassing circularity, where
his science would favor transcendental
deduction. Every category would then assume a
mathematical and contextual function; a rational
and structural identity in the maze of wholes
and parts. Verstehen?
Published: January 17, 2007 2:19 PM