Utopia, you are standing in it!

There is an issue within philosophy of science that became the trigger of my interest in this discipline about two years ago. It refers to the question of the nature of the scientific growth. For centuries it was generally acknowledged and approved that the advance in scientific knowledge has a cumulative character. New data were thought to be simply added to already existent and classified knowledge in a linear and somehow predictable growth and development of various scientific disciplines. Such was the  opinion of both methodologists of classical science (e.g. Herschel or Whewell), and more contemporary proponents of logical positivism, verificationism, and empiricism.

This idea of science as a rational and critical inquiry bringing a continuous and steady growth of a publicly verifiable knowledge was radically challenged by Thomas Kuhn, a professor of philosophy of science at the University of Berkeley, whose The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a “must-read”…

| Peter Klein |

It’s Hayek-Klein Day, and bloggers are sharing their favorite Hayek quotes (Boudreaux, Horwitz). Here’s one of mine:

The typical intellectual . . . need not possess special knowledge of anything in particular, nor need he even be particularly intelligent, to perform his role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas. What qualifies him for his job is the wide range of subjects on which he can readily talk and write, and a position or habits through which he becomes acquainted with new ideas sooner than those to whom he addresses himself.

That’s from “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” published in 1949. (See this for an elaboration of Hayek’s argument.) Substitute “blogger” for “intellectual” and the passage could have been written today!

| Peter Klein |

At the Kauffman data symposium participants were given little notebooks with the Kauffman logo and a quote from Hayek — “Society’s course will be changed only by a change in ideas” — on the cover. It’s a nice line and certainly in the spirit of Hayek’s views on social change as expressed in The Road to Serfdom, “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” and other works, though the exact quotation does not seem to appear in Hayek’s writings. (The line is attributed to Hayek by John Blundell, recounting a conversation between Hayek and IEA founder Antony Fisher. In “The Rediscovery of Freedom,” written in 1983, Hayek puts it this way: “A young English pilot who had returned from the war and had made a great deal of money in a few years as an entrepreneur came to me [around 1947] and asked me what he could do to…

| Peter Klein |

A fundamental distinction between organizations and markets is teleological: organizations are established by specific individuals to achieve specific purposes, while markets emerge, organically, from the bottom up. Carl Menger used the terms “organizations” and “orders” to distinguish these two categories of institutions; Hayek preferred the obscure Greek terms taxis and cosmos. Invoking this distinction does not deny, of course, that there are “organic” elements within firms, or that markets are infused with institutions that are at least partly “designed” (civil law codes, for instance).

What, then, is meant by “market design,” as in designing markets for cadaveric organs, education vouchers, or tradeable emissions permits? Do attempts to do so constitute what Hayek called “constructivist rationalism” or “constructivism,” the belief that we can remake social institutions that have emerged incrementally, over long periods of time, to suit our current whims?

Lynne Kiesling and Mike…

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