Subjectivism and Economic Analysis: Essays in memory of Ludwig ...

LÁSLÓ CSONTOSof course depict relationships between formal entities these neednot, and in a world of changing knowledge cannot, remainconstant.(Lachmann 1986:22–3)Or, as Lachmann (1986:48), quoting Shackle (1972:76) approvinglynotes, ‘ours is “a kaleidic society, interspersing its moments orintervals of order, assurance and beauty with sudden disintegrationand a cascade into a new pattern”’.Finally, Lachmann (1986:30) fully shares Shackles view that‘economics, concerned with thoughts and only secondarily withthings, the objects of those thoughts, must be as protean as thoughtitself. To adopt a rigid frame and appeal exclusively to it is bound tobe fatal.’ The fact thatin the real world knowledge requisite to action as a rule involvesA’s knowledge of B’s knowledge of C’s knowledge compoundsthe difficulty for the economist as observer no less than for theagents having to face it in reality.(Shackle 1972:246)It was not Hayek, Mises, Shackle or Lachmann, however, who firstthought out, formulated and brought to their logical conclusions thebasic tenets of methodological solipsism, including the ontologicalbeliefs discussed above. Although the most elemental components ofthis methodological position can be traced back to Carl Menger, itsconsequences as to the methodology of the social sciences, mostnotably economic theory, were first noted and systematically exploredby a now practically unknown, but at the turn of the century veryhighly regarded, German economist and philosopher of science,Friedrich von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld.I want to present a small collection of some of the metaphors thatexpress very clearly Gottl’s overall Weltgefühl and, at the same time,reveal the roots of the methodological position under discussion. 2Gottl compares and contrasts repeatedly ‘the greenness of life’ withgrey theories; talks about ‘the green reality of thinking’; ‘the entangledweb of experience’, ‘current of events’, ‘events whirling around us’.He claims that ‘the occurrence of an act is a variation on the endlessmelody of life’ and he discusses ‘the surge of the colorful world’, ‘theendless sea of action’, ‘the warm life’, ‘the endless stream of the worldof human action’, and finally ‘the confusing totality of connections’.There is no need to comment extensively on the ontological imagery82