Economic Science and the Austrian Method_3

Hans-Hermann Hoppeprecisely Misesians, from all other current economicschools. All the others conceive ofeconomics as an empiricalscience, as a science like physics, which develops hypothesesthat require continual empirical testing. And they all regardas dogmatic and unscientific Mises's view that economictheorems-like the law of marginal utili~ or the law ofreturns, or the time-preference theory of interest and theAustrian business cycle theory-can be given definite proof,such that it can be shown to be plainly contradictory to denytheir validi~The view ofMark Blaug, highly representative ofmainstreammethodological thought, illustrates this almost universalopposition to Austrianism. Blaug says ofMises, "Hiswritings on the foundations of economic science are socranky and idiosyncratic that one can only wonder that theyhave been taken seriously by anyone.,,4Blaug does not provide one argument to substantiate hisoutrage. His chapter on Austrianism simply ends with thatstatement. Could it be that Blaug's and others' rejection ofMises's apriorism may have more to do with the fact thatthe demanding standards of argumentative rigor, whichan apriorist methodology implies, prove too much forthem?54Mark Blaug, The Methodology ofEconomics (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1980), p. 93; for a similar statement of outrage see Paul Samuelson,Collected Scientific Papers, vol. 3 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1972), p. 761.5Another prominent critic of praxeology is Terence W Hutchison, TheSignificance and Basic Postulates ofEconomic Theory (London: Macmillan, 1938).Hutchison, like Blaug an adherent of the Popperian variant of empiricism, hassince become much less enthusiastic about the prospects ofadvancing economicsalong empiricist lines (see, for instance, his Knowledge and Ignorance in Economics[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977]; and The Politics and Philosophy ofEconomics [New York: New York University Press, 1981]), yet he still sees noalternative to Popper's falsificationism. A position and development quite similarThe Ludwig von Mises Institute • 9