Economic Science and the Austrian Method_3

Economic Science and the Austrian MethodAnd if an experience falsified a hypothesis, this wouldnot be decisive either. For ifit was observed thatA was notfollowed by B, it would still be possible that the hypotheticallyrelated phenomena were causally linked. It could bethat some other circumstance or variable, heretofore neglectedanduncontrolled, had simply prevented the hypothesizedrelationship from actually being observed. At themost, falsification only proves that the particular hypothesisunder investigation was not completely correct as it stood.It needs some refinement, some specification of additionalvariables which have to be watched for and controlled sothat we might observe the hypothesized relationship between4andB. But, to be sure, a falsification would neverprove once and for all that a relationship between somegiven phenomena did not exist, just as a confirmation wouldnever definitively prove that it did exist. 21When we consider this position, we notice that it againimplies a denial of a priori knowledge that is at the sametime knowledge about anything real. Any proposition thatclaims to be a priori can, according to empiricism, be nomore than signs on paper that are related to each other bydefinition or by arbitrary stipulation, and is thus completelyvoid: it is without connection to the world of real thingswhatsoever. Such a system of signs only becomes an empiricallymeaningful theory once an empirical interpretationis given to its symbols. Yet as soon as such aninterpretation is given to its symbols, the theory is nolonger a priori true but rather becomes and remains foreverhypothetical.2IOn the relativistic and-on the level of politics-interventionist implicationsof empiricism, see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "The Intellectual Cover forSocialism," The Free Market (February 1988).30 • The Ludwig von Mises Institute