WEBVTT NOTE II. The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Chapter 2. The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:11.000 1. Praxeology and History 3 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:18.000 There are two main branches of the sciences of human action, praxeology and history. 4 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:25.000 History is the collection and systematic arrangement of all data of experience concerning human action. 5 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:29.000 It deals with the concrete content of human action. 6 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:36.240 It studies all human endeavors in their infinite multiplicity and variety, and all individual 7 00:00:36.240 --> 00:00:42.440 actions with all their accidental, special and particular implications. 8 00:00:42.440 --> 00:00:49.140 It scrutinizes the ideas guiding acting men and the outcome of the actions performed. 9 00:00:49.140 --> 00:00:53.420 It embraces every aspect of human activities. 10 00:00:53.420 --> 00:00:58.780 It is, on the one hand, general history, and, on the other hand, the history of various 11 00:00:58.780 --> 00:01:01.140 narrower fields. 12 00:01:01.140 --> 00:01:07.140 There is the history of political and military action, of ideas and philosophy, of economic 13 00:01:07.140 --> 00:01:13.740 activities, of technology, of literature, art and science, of religion, of mores and 14 00:01:13.740 --> 00:01:18.120 customs and of many other realms of human life. 15 00:01:18.120 --> 00:01:23.740 There is ethnology and anthropology, as far as they are not a part of biology, and there 16 00:01:23.740 --> 00:01:30.740 is psychology, as far as it is neither physiology nor epistemology nor philosophy. 17 00:01:30.740 --> 00:01:37.960 There is linguistics, as far as it is neither logic nor the physiology of speech. 18 00:01:37.960 --> 00:01:44.700 Economic history, descriptive economics and economic statistics are, of course, history. 19 00:01:44.700 --> 00:01:49.280 The term sociology is used in two different meanings. 20 00:01:49.280 --> 00:01:54.800 Descriptive sociology deals with those historical phenomena of human action which are not viewed 21 00:01:54.800 --> 00:01:57.500 in descriptive economics. 22 00:01:57.500 --> 00:02:04.100 It overlaps, to some extent, the field claimed by ethnology and anthropology. 23 00:02:04.100 --> 00:02:09.640 General sociology, on the other hand, approaches historical experience from a more nearly universal 24 00:02:09.640 --> 00:02:14.360 point of view than that of the other branches of history. 25 00:02:14.360 --> 00:02:19.440 Every proper, for instance, deals with an individual town, or with towns in a definite 26 00:02:19.440 --> 00:02:26.000 period, or with an individual people, or with a certain geographical area. 27 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:33.380 Max Weber, in his main treatise Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, deals with the town in general, 28 00:02:33.380 --> 00:02:39.380 that is, with the whole historical experience concerning towns, without any limitation to 29 00:02:39.380 --> 00:02:53.220 The subject matter of all historical sciences is the past. 30 00:02:53.220 --> 00:02:58.780 They cannot teach us anything which would be valid for all human actions, that is, for 31 00:02:58.780 --> 00:03:00.900 the future too. 32 00:03:00.900 --> 00:03:06.740 The study of history makes a man wise and judicious, but it does not by itself provide 33 00:03:06.740 --> 00:03:17.500 The Natural Sciences, too, deal with past events. 34 00:03:17.500 --> 00:03:21.700 Every experience is an experience of something passed away. 35 00:03:21.700 --> 00:03:25.300 There is no experience of future happenings. 36 00:03:25.300 --> 00:03:31.180 But the experience to which the Natural Sciences owe all their success is the experience of 37 00:03:31.180 --> 00:03:37.540 The experiment in which the individual elements of change can be observed in isolation. 38 00:03:37.540 --> 00:03:43.500 The facts amassed in this way can be used for induction, a peculiar procedure of inference 39 00:03:43.500 --> 00:03:49.520 which has given pragmatic evidence of its expediency, although its satisfactory epistemological 40 00:03:49.520 --> 00:03:54.240 characterization is still an unsolved problem. 41 00:03:54.240 --> 00:03:59.860 The experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is always an experience 42 00:03:59.860 --> 00:04:02.700 Experiments of Complex Phenomena 43 00:04:02.700 --> 00:04:07.980 No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action. 44 00:04:07.980 --> 00:04:13.900 We are never in a position to observe the change in one element only, all other conditions 45 00:04:13.900 --> 00:04:20.660 of the event being equal to a case in which the element concerned did not change. 46 00:04:20.660 --> 00:04:25.860 Historical experience as an experience of complex phenomena does not provide us with 47 00:04:25.860 --> 00:04:32.460 Facts in the sense in which the natural sciences employ this term to signify isolated events 48 00:04:32.460 --> 00:04:34.880 tested in experiments. 49 00:04:34.880 --> 00:04:40.660 The information conveyed by historical experience cannot be used as building material for the 50 00:04:40.660 --> 00:04:45.260 construction of theories and the prediction of future events. 51 00:04:45.260 --> 00:04:51.240 Every historical experience is open to various interpretations and is in fact interpreted 52 00:04:51.240 --> 00:04:53.860 in different ways. 53 00:04:53.860 --> 00:05:00.380 The postulates of positivism and kindred schools of metaphysics are therefore illusory. 54 00:05:00.380 --> 00:05:05.920 It is impossible to reform the sciences of human action according to the pattern of physics 55 00:05:05.920 --> 00:05:08.660 and the other natural sciences. 56 00:05:08.660 --> 00:05:16.220 There is no means to establish an a posteriori theory of human conduct and social events. 57 00:05:16.220 --> 00:05:21.640 History can neither prove nor disprove any general statement in the manner in which the 58 00:05:21.640 --> 00:05:29.280 and Natural Sciences accept or reject a hypothesis on the ground of laboratory experiments. 59 00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:35.300 Neither experimental verification nor experimental falsification of a general proposition are 60 00:05:35.300 --> 00:05:39.400 possible in this field. 61 00:05:39.400 --> 00:05:45.100 Complex phenomena in the production of which various causal chains are interlaced cannot 62 00:05:45.100 --> 00:05:47.840 test any theory. 63 00:05:47.840 --> 00:05:54.640 Such phenomena, on the contrary, become intelligible only through an interpretation in terms of 64 00:05:54.640 --> 00:05:59.040 theories previously developed from other sources. 65 00:05:59.040 --> 00:06:04.560 In the case of natural phenomena, the interpretation of an event must not be at variance with the 66 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:09.060 theories satisfactorily verified by experiments. 67 00:06:09.060 --> 00:06:14.140 In the case of historical events, there is no such restriction. 68 00:06:14.140 --> 00:06:18.900 Theories would be free to resort to quite arbitrary explanations. 69 00:06:18.900 --> 00:06:24.460 Where there is something to explain, the human mind has never been at a loss to invent ad 70 00:06:24.460 --> 00:06:30.820 hoc some imaginary theories, lacking any logical justification. 71 00:06:30.820 --> 00:06:36.380 A limitation similar to that which the experimentally tested theories enjoin upon the attempts 72 00:06:36.380 --> 00:06:43.280 to interpret and elucidate individual physical, chemical and physiological events is provided 73 00:06:43.280 --> 00:06:48.200 by Praxeology in the Field of Human History. 74 00:06:48.200 --> 00:06:53.480 Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. 75 00:06:53.480 --> 00:07:00.320 Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental and individual 76 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:03.740 circumstances of the concrete acts. 77 00:07:03.740 --> 00:07:09.520 Its cognition is purely formal and general, without reference to the material content 78 00:07:09.520 --> 00:07:13.360 and the particular features of the actual case. 79 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:19.680 It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond 80 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:23.960 to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. 81 00:07:23.960 --> 00:07:28.800 Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. 82 00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:33.800 They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. 83 00:07:33.800 --> 00:07:40.380 They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts. 84 00:07:40.380 --> 00:07:47.540 They are both logically and temporally antecedent to any comprehension of historical facts. 85 00:07:47.540 --> 00:07:54.000 They are a necessary requirement of any intellectual grasp of historical events. 86 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:58.920 Without them, we should not be able to see in the course of events anything else than 87 00:07:58.920 --> 00:08:10.920 in Kaleidoscopic Change and Chaotic Muddle, 2. The Formal and Aprioristic Character of Praxeology 88 00:08:10.920 --> 00:08:18.920 A fashionable tendency in contemporary philosophy is to deny the existence of any apriori knowledge. 89 00:08:18.920 --> 00:08:23.920 All human knowledge, it is contended, is derived from experience. 90 00:08:23.920 --> 00:08:29.460 This attitude can easily be understood as an excessive reaction against the extravagances 91 00:08:29.460 --> 00:08:35.380 of theology and asperious philosophy of history and of nature. 92 00:08:35.380 --> 00:08:41.020 Metaphysicians were eager to discover by intuition moral precepts, the meaning of historical 93 00:08:41.020 --> 00:08:46.760 evolution, the properties of soul and matter, and the laws governing physical, chemical 94 00:08:46.760 --> 00:08:49.560 and physiological events. 95 00:08:49.560 --> 00:08:55.720 Their volatile speculations manifested a blithe disregard for matter-of-fact knowledge. 96 00:08:55.720 --> 00:09:01.240 They were convinced that without reference to experience, reason could explain all things 97 00:09:01.240 --> 00:09:04.600 and answer all questions. 98 00:09:04.600 --> 00:09:10.740 The modern natural sciences owe their success to the method of observation and experiment. 99 00:09:10.740 --> 00:09:17.000 There is no doubt that empiricism and pragmatism are right as far as they merely describe the 100 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:20.160 and the Procedures of the Natural Sciences. 101 00:09:20.160 --> 00:09:26.200 But it is no less certain that they are entirely wrong in their endeavors to reject any kind 102 00:09:26.200 --> 00:09:33.420 of a priori knowledge, and to characterize logic, mathematics and praxeology as empirical 103 00:09:33.420 --> 00:09:36.840 and experimental disciplines. 104 00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:42.200 With regard to praxeology, the errors of the philosophers are due to their complete ignorance 105 00:09:42.200 --> 00:09:48.680 of Economics, and very often to their shockingly insufficient knowledge of history. 106 00:09:48.680 --> 00:09:54.000 In the eyes of the philosopher, the treatment of philosophical issues is a sublime and noble 107 00:09:54.000 --> 00:10:00.120 vocation which must not be put upon the low level of other gainful employments. 108 00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:05.200 The professor resents the fact that he derives an income from philosophizing. 109 00:10:05.200 --> 00:10:11.320 He is offended by the thought that he earns money like the artisan and the farmhand. 110 00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:16.240 Contemporary matters are mean things, and the philosopher investigating the eminent problems 111 00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:23.560 of truth and absolute eternal values should not soil his mind by paying attention to them. 112 00:10:23.560 --> 00:10:30.240 No line of any contemporary philosopher discloses the least familiarity with even the most elementary 113 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:33.200 problems of economics. 114 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:39.080 The problem of whether there are or whether there are not a priori elements of thought, 115 00:10:39.080 --> 00:10:46.080 that is, necessary and ineluctable intellectual conditions of thinking, anterior to any actual 116 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:52.240 instance of conception and experience, must not be confused with the genetic problem of 117 00:10:52.240 --> 00:10:58.040 how man acquired his characteristically human mental ability. 118 00:10:58.040 --> 00:11:03.260 Man is descended from non-human ancestors who lacked this ability. 119 00:11:03.260 --> 00:11:08.980 These ancestors were endowed with some potentiality which in the course of ages of evolution 120 00:11:08.980 --> 00:11:12.280 converted them into reasonable beings. 121 00:11:12.280 --> 00:11:18.080 This transformation was achieved by the influence of a changing cosmic environment operating 122 00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:21.080 upon succeeding generations. 123 00:11:21.080 --> 00:11:26.560 Hence the empiricist concludes that the fundamental principles of reasoning are an outcome of 124 00:11:26.560 --> 00:11:33.380 experience and represent an adaptation of man to the conditions of his environment. 125 00:11:33.380 --> 00:11:38.260 This idea leads, when consistently followed, to the further conclusion that there were 126 00:11:38.260 --> 00:11:44.920 There were, between our pre-human ancestors and homo sapiens, various intermediate stages. 127 00:11:44.920 --> 00:11:50.240 There were beings which, although not yet equipped with the human faculty of reason, 128 00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:55.200 were endowed with some rudimentary elements of ratiocination. 129 00:11:55.200 --> 00:12:03.080 Theirs was not yet a logical mind, but a pre-logical, or rather imperfectly logical mind. 130 00:12:03.080 --> 00:12:09.360 Their desultory and defective logical functions evolved step by step from the pre-logical 131 00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:12.160 state toward the logical state. 132 00:12:12.160 --> 00:12:17.000 Reason, intellect and logic are historical phenomena. 133 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:21.760 There is a history of logic as there is a history of technology. 134 00:12:21.760 --> 00:12:27.520 Nothing suggests that logic as we know it is the last and final stage of intellectual 135 00:12:27.520 --> 00:12:29.480 evolution. 136 00:12:29.480 --> 00:12:36.400 Human logic is a historical phase between pre-human non-logic on the one hand and superhuman 137 00:12:36.400 --> 00:12:39.240 logic on the other hand. 138 00:12:39.240 --> 00:12:45.220 Reason and mind, the human being's most efficacious equipment in their struggle for survival, 139 00:12:45.220 --> 00:12:49.660 are embedded in the continuous flow of zoological events. 140 00:12:49.660 --> 00:12:52.780 They are neither eternal nor unchangeable. 141 00:12:52.780 --> 00:12:54.780 They are transitory. 142 00:12:54.780 --> 00:13:01.340 Furthermore, there is no doubt that every human being repeats in his personal evolution 143 00:13:01.340 --> 00:13:07.160 not only the physiological metamorphosis from a simple cell into a highly complicated mammal 144 00:13:07.160 --> 00:13:14.900 organism, but no less the spiritual metamorphosis from a purely vegetative and animal existence 145 00:13:14.900 --> 00:13:17.900 into a reasonable mind. 146 00:13:17.900 --> 00:13:23.780 This transformation is not completed in the prenatal life of the embryo, but only later, 147 00:13:23.780 --> 00:13:30.540 When the newborn child step by step awakens to human consciousness, thus every man in 148 00:13:30.540 --> 00:13:36.060 his early youth, starting from the depths of darkness, proceeds through various states 149 00:13:36.060 --> 00:13:39.800 of the mind's logical structure. 150 00:13:39.800 --> 00:13:42.580 Then there is the case of the animals. 151 00:13:42.580 --> 00:13:48.660 We are fully aware of the unbridgeable gulf separating our reason from the reactive processes 152 00:13:48.660 --> 00:13:55.660 of Money, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money 153 00:14:18.660 --> 00:14:21.660 Fundamental Perfect Cognition 154 00:14:21.660 --> 00:14:25.660 But the problem of the a priori is of a different character. 155 00:14:25.660 --> 00:14:31.180 It does not deal with the problem of how consciousness and reason have emerged. 156 00:14:31.180 --> 00:14:38.660 It refers to the essential and necessary character of the logical structure of the human mind. 157 00:14:38.660 --> 00:14:44.220 The fundamental logical relations are not subject to proof or disproof. 158 00:14:44.220 --> 00:14:48.340 Every attempt to prove them must presuppose their validity. 159 00:14:48.340 --> 00:14:54.940 It is impossible to explain them to a being who would not possess them on his own account. 160 00:14:54.940 --> 00:14:59.740 Efforts to define them according to the rules of definition must fail. 161 00:14:59.740 --> 00:15:06.100 They are primary propositions antecedent to any nominal or real definition. 162 00:15:06.100 --> 00:15:09.840 They are ultimate, unanalyzable categories. 163 00:15:09.840 --> 00:15:16.740 The human mind is utterly incapable of imagining logical categories at variance with them. 164 00:15:16.740 --> 00:15:22.700 No matter how they may appear to superhuman beings, they are, for man, inescapable and 165 00:15:22.700 --> 00:15:24.980 absolutely necessary. 166 00:15:24.980 --> 00:15:32.080 They are the indispensable prerequisite of perception, apperception and experience. 167 00:15:32.080 --> 00:15:36.880 They are no less an indispensable prerequisite of memory. 168 00:15:36.880 --> 00:15:41.700 There is a tendency in the natural sciences to describe memory as an instance of a more 169 00:15:41.700 --> 00:15:44.220 general phenomenon. 170 00:15:44.220 --> 00:15:50.000 Every living organism conserves the effects of earlier stimulation, and the present state 171 00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:56.000 of inorganic matter is shaped by the effects of all the influences to which it was exposed 172 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:58.040 in the past. 173 00:15:58.040 --> 00:16:02.800 The present state of the universe is the product of its past. 174 00:16:02.800 --> 00:16:08.020 We may, therefore, in a loose metaphorical sense, say that the geological structure of 175 00:16:08.020 --> 00:16:14.620 of our globe conserves the memory of all earlier cosmic changes, and that a man's body is 176 00:16:14.620 --> 00:16:21.020 the sedimentation of his ancestors and his own destinies and vicissitudes. 177 00:16:21.020 --> 00:16:26.020 But memory is something entirely different from the fact of the structural unity and 178 00:16:26.020 --> 00:16:29.220 continuity of cosmic evolution. 179 00:16:29.220 --> 00:16:36.740 It is a phenomenon of consciousness, and as such conditioned by the logical a priori. 180 00:16:36.740 --> 00:16:41.100 Scientists have been puzzled by the fact that man does not remember anything from the time 181 00:16:41.100 --> 00:16:45.300 of his existence as an embryo and as a suckling. 182 00:16:45.300 --> 00:16:51.140 Freud tried to explain this absence of recollection as brought about by subconscious suppression 183 00:16:51.140 --> 00:16:54.140 of undesired reminiscences. 184 00:16:54.140 --> 00:17:00.340 The truth is that there is nothing to be remembered of unconscious states. 185 00:17:00.340 --> 00:17:05.700 Animal automatism and unconscious response to physiological stimulations are neither 186 00:17:05.700 --> 00:17:11.900 Neither for embryos and sucklings, nor for adults, material for remembrance. 187 00:17:11.900 --> 00:17:16.100 Only conscious states can be remembered. 188 00:17:16.100 --> 00:17:23.220 The human mind is not a tabula rasa on which the external events write their own history. 189 00:17:23.220 --> 00:17:27.860 It is equipped with a set of tools for grasping reality. 190 00:17:27.860 --> 00:17:33.580 Man acquired these tools, that is, the logical structure of his mind in the course of his 191 00:17:33.580 --> 00:17:49.020 Man is not only an animal totally subject to the stimuli unavoidably determining the circumstances 192 00:17:49.020 --> 00:17:57.220 of his life, he is also an acting being, and the category of action is logically antecedent 193 00:17:57.220 --> 00:18:00.400 to any concrete act. 194 00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:06.060 The fact that man does not have the creative power to imagine categories at variance with 195 00:18:06.060 --> 00:18:12.140 the fundamental logical relations and with the principles of causality and teleology 196 00:18:12.140 --> 00:18:18.900 enjoins upon us what may be called methodological a priorism. 197 00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:24.100 Everybody in his daily behavior again and again bears witness to the immutability and 198 00:18:24.100 --> 00:18:28.480 universality of the categories of thought and action. 199 00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:34.140 He who addresses his fellow men, who wants to inform and convince them, who asks questions 200 00:18:34.140 --> 00:18:39.880 and answers other people's questions, can proceed in this way only because he can appeal 201 00:18:39.880 --> 00:18:47.440 to something common to all men, namely the logical structure of human reason. 202 00:18:47.440 --> 00:18:54.260 The idea that A could at the same time be non-A, or that to prefer A to B could at the 203 00:18:54.260 --> 00:19:01.260 It does not matter for man whether or not, beyond the sphere accessible to the human mind, there are other spheres in which there is something categorically different. 204 00:19:24.260 --> 00:19:27.500 are different from human thinking and acting. 205 00:19:27.500 --> 00:19:32.200 No knowledge from such spheres penetrates to the human mind. 206 00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:37.540 It is idle to ask whether things in themselves are different from what they appear to us, 207 00:19:37.540 --> 00:19:43.980 and whether there are worlds which we cannot divine and ideas which we cannot comprehend. 208 00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:48.680 These are problems beyond the scope of human cognition. 209 00:19:48.680 --> 00:19:53.320 Human knowledge is conditioned by the structure of the human mind. 210 00:19:53.320 --> 00:19:58.940 If it chooses human action as the subject matter of its inquiries, it cannot mean anything 211 00:19:58.940 --> 00:20:05.320 else than the categories of action which are proper to the human mind, and are its projection 212 00:20:05.320 --> 00:20:10.240 into the external world of becoming and change. 213 00:20:10.240 --> 00:20:16.560 All the theorems of praxeology refer only to these categories of action, and are valid 214 00:20:16.560 --> 00:20:19.840 only in the orbit of their operation. 215 00:20:19.840 --> 00:20:25.780 They do not pretend to convey any information about never dreamed of and unimaginable worlds 216 00:20:25.780 --> 00:20:28.320 and relations. 217 00:20:28.320 --> 00:20:32.160 Thus praxeology is human in a double sense. 218 00:20:32.160 --> 00:20:37.940 It is human because it claims for its theorems, within the sphere precisely defined in the 219 00:20:37.940 --> 00:20:43.560 underlying assumptions, universal validity for all human action. 220 00:20:43.560 --> 00:20:49.660 It is human, moreover, because it deals only with human action, and does not aspire to 221 00:20:49.660 --> 00:20:57.700 know about non-human, whether sub-human or super-human, action. 222 00:20:57.700 --> 00:21:03.660 The Alleged Logical Heterogeneity of Primitive Man 223 00:21:03.660 --> 00:21:09.080 It is a general fallacy to believe that the writings of Lucian Lévi-Brûl give support 224 00:21:09.080 --> 00:21:15.380 Note to the doctrine that the logical structure of mind of primitive man was and is categorically 225 00:21:15.380 --> 00:21:18.800 different from that of civilized man. 226 00:21:18.800 --> 00:21:25.240 On the contrary, what Lévi-Brûl, on the basis of a careful scrutiny of the entire ethnological 227 00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:31.400 material available, reports about the mental functions of primitive man, proves clearly 228 00:21:31.400 --> 00:21:36.860 that the fundamental logical relations and the categories of thought and action play 229 00:21:36.860 --> 00:21:43.140 and the intellectual activities of savages, the same role they play in our own life. 230 00:21:43.140 --> 00:21:48.580 The content of primitive man's thoughts differs from the content of our thoughts, but the 231 00:21:48.580 --> 00:21:53.260 formal and logical structure is common to both. 232 00:21:53.260 --> 00:21:59.100 It is true that Levy-Bruhl himself maintains that the mentality of primitive peoples is 233 00:21:59.100 --> 00:22:03.760 essentially mystic and pre-logical in character. 234 00:22:03.760 --> 00:22:10.120 of Man's collective representations are regulated by the law of participation and are consequently 235 00:22:10.120 --> 00:22:13.080 indifferent to the law of contradiction. 236 00:22:13.080 --> 00:22:19.400 However, Levy-Bruell's distinction between pre-logical and logical thinking refers to 237 00:22:19.400 --> 00:22:25.360 the content and not to the form and categorical structure of thinking. 238 00:22:25.360 --> 00:22:31.720 For he declares that also among peoples like ourselves, ideas and relations between ideas 239 00:22:31.720 --> 00:22:37.440 Laws governed by the law of participation exist, more or less independently, more or 240 00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:45.260 less impaired, but yet ineradicable, side by side with those subject to the law of reasoning. 241 00:22:45.260 --> 00:22:51.200 The pre-logical and the mystic are coexistent with the logical. 242 00:22:51.200 --> 00:22:56.740 Levy-Bruell relegates the essential teachings of Christianity to the realm of the pre-logical 243 00:22:56.740 --> 00:22:58.400 mind. 244 00:22:58.400 --> 00:23:03.100 Now many objections can possibly be raised and have been raised against the Christian 245 00:23:03.100 --> 00:23:06.960 doctrines and their interpretation by theology. 246 00:23:06.960 --> 00:23:12.080 But nobody ever ventured to contend that the Christian fathers and philosophers, among 247 00:23:12.080 --> 00:23:18.480 them St. Augustine and St. Thomas, had minds whose logical structure was categorically 248 00:23:18.480 --> 00:23:22.040 different from that of our contemporaries. 249 00:23:22.040 --> 00:23:27.440 The dispute between a man who believes in miracles and another who does not refers to 250 00:23:27.440 --> 00:23:32.440 to the content of thought, not to its logical form. 251 00:23:32.440 --> 00:23:39.080 A man who tries to demonstrate the possibility and reality of miracles may err, but to unmask 252 00:23:39.080 --> 00:23:45.680 his error is, as the brilliant essays of Hume and Mill show, certainly no less logically 253 00:23:45.680 --> 00:23:51.600 intricate than to explode any philosophical or economic fallacy. 254 00:23:51.600 --> 00:23:57.440 Teachers and missionaries report that in Africa and Polynesia, primitive man stops short 255 00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:03.280 at his earliest perception of things, and never reasons, if he can in any way avoid 256 00:24:03.280 --> 00:24:10.780 it. European and American educators sometimes report the same of their students. With regard 257 00:24:10.780 --> 00:24:17.500 to the mossy on the Niger, Levy-Bruell quotes a missionary's observation. Conversation 258 00:24:17.500 --> 00:24:23.940 with them turns only upon women, food, and, in the rainy season, the crops. 259 00:24:23.940 --> 00:24:29.100 What other subjects did many contemporaries and neighbors of Newton, Kant and Levy-Bruhl 260 00:24:29.100 --> 00:24:30.740 prefer? 261 00:24:30.740 --> 00:24:37.260 The conclusion to be drawn from Levy-Bruhl's studies is best expressed in his own words. 262 00:24:37.260 --> 00:24:42.860 The primitive mind, like our own, is anxious to find the reasons for what happens, but 263 00:24:42.860 --> 00:24:47.900 But it does not seek these in the same direction as we do. 264 00:24:47.900 --> 00:24:54.060 A peasant eager to get a rich crop may, according to the content of his ideas, choose various 265 00:24:54.060 --> 00:24:55.300 methods. 266 00:24:55.300 --> 00:25:01.100 He may perform some magical rites, he may embark upon a pilgrimage, he may offer a candle 267 00:25:01.100 --> 00:25:07.220 to the image of his patron saint, or he may employ more and better fertilizer. 268 00:25:07.220 --> 00:25:14.660 And whatever he does, it is always action, that is, the employment of means for the attainment 269 00:25:14.660 --> 00:25:16.460 of ends. 270 00:25:16.460 --> 00:25:21.140 Magic is, in a broader sense, a variety of technology. 271 00:25:21.140 --> 00:25:27.420 Exorcism is a deliberate, purposeful action based on a world view which most of our contemporaries 272 00:25:27.420 --> 00:25:33.840 condemn as superstitious and therefore as inappropriate, but the concept of action does 273 00:25:33.840 --> 00:25:39.680 Does not imply that the action is guided by a correct theory and a technology promising 274 00:25:39.680 --> 00:25:44.160 success, and that it attains the end aimed at. 275 00:25:44.160 --> 00:25:50.000 It only implies that the performer of the action believes that the means applied will 276 00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:53.720 produce the desired effect. 277 00:25:53.720 --> 00:25:59.720 No facts provided by ethnology or history contradict the assertion that the logical 278 00:25:59.720 --> 00:26:08.160 The philosophical structure of mind is uniform with all men of all races, ages and countries. 279 00:26:08.160 --> 00:26:09.960 3. 280 00:26:09.960 --> 00:26:14.520 The Apriori and Reality 281 00:26:14.520 --> 00:26:18.640 Aprioristic reasoning is purely conceptual and deductive. 282 00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:24.200 It cannot produce anything else but tautologies and analytic judgments. 283 00:26:24.200 --> 00:26:29.380 All its implications are logically derived from the premises and were already contained 284 00:26:29.380 --> 00:26:37.380 in them. Hence, according to a popular objection, it cannot add anything to our knowledge. 285 00:26:37.380 --> 00:26:43.800 All geometrical theorems are already implied in the axioms. The concept of a rectangular 286 00:26:43.800 --> 00:26:51.580 triangle already implies the theorem of Pythagoras. This theorem is a tautology. Its deduction 287 00:26:51.580 --> 00:26:58.860 results in an analytic judgment. Nonetheless, nobody would contend that geometry in general 288 00:26:58.860 --> 00:27:05.220 and the theorem of Pythagoras in particular do not enlarge our knowledge. 289 00:27:05.220 --> 00:27:11.500 Cognition from purely deductive reasoning is also creative and opens for our mind access 290 00:27:11.500 --> 00:27:14.540 to previously barred spheres. 291 00:27:14.540 --> 00:27:20.500 The significant task of a prioristic reasoning is, on the one hand, to bring into relief 292 00:27:20.500 --> 00:27:27.780 all that is implied in the categories, concepts and premises, and, on the other hand, to show 293 00:27:27.780 --> 00:27:35.280 is what they do not imply. It is its vocation to render manifest and obvious what was hidden 294 00:27:35.280 --> 00:27:41.160 and unknown before. In the concept of money, all the theorems 295 00:27:41.160 --> 00:27:47.620 of monetary theory are already implied. The quantity theory does not add to our knowledge 296 00:27:47.620 --> 00:27:54.940 anything which is not virtually contained in the concept of money. It transforms, develops 297 00:27:54.940 --> 00:28:02.300 and Unfolds. It only analyzes, and is therefore tautological, like the Theorem of Pythagoras 298 00:28:02.300 --> 00:28:09.380 in relation to the concept of the rectangular triangle. However, nobody would deny the cognitive 299 00:28:09.380 --> 00:28:16.100 value of the quantity theory. To a mind not enlightened by economic reasoning, it remains 300 00:28:16.100 --> 00:28:22.460 unknown. A long line of abortive attempts to solve the problems concerned shows that 301 00:28:22.460 --> 00:28:27.940 And it was certainly not easy to attain the present state of knowledge. 302 00:28:27.940 --> 00:28:33.740 It is not a deficiency of the system of aprioristic science that it does not convey to us the 303 00:28:33.740 --> 00:28:36.860 full cognition of reality. 304 00:28:36.860 --> 00:28:43.380 Its concepts and theorems are mental tools opening the approach to a complete grasp of 305 00:28:43.380 --> 00:28:44.480 reality. 306 00:28:44.480 --> 00:28:50.500 They are, to be sure, not in themselves already the totality of factual knowledge about all 307 00:28:50.500 --> 00:28:59.500 Theory and the comprehension of living and changing reality are not in opposition to one another. 308 00:28:59.500 --> 00:29:09.500 Without theory, the general a prioristic science of human action, there is no comprehension of the reality of human action. 309 00:29:09.500 --> 00:29:16.500 The relation between reason and experience has long been one of the fundamental philosophical problems. 310 00:29:16.500 --> 00:29:24.500 Like all other problems of the critique of knowledge, philosophers have approached it only with reference to the natural sciences. 311 00:29:24.500 --> 00:29:31.500 They have ignored the sciences of human action. Their contributions have been useless for praxeology. 312 00:29:31.500 --> 00:29:41.500 It is customary in the treatment of the epistemological problems of economics to adopt one of the solutions suggested for the natural sciences. 313 00:29:41.500 --> 00:29:53.500 Some authors recommend Poincaré's conventionalism. They regard the premises of economic reasoning as a matter of linguistic or postulational convention. 314 00:29:53.500 --> 00:30:00.500 Others prefer to acquiesce in ideas advanced by Einstein. Einstein raises the question, 315 00:30:00.500 --> 00:30:10.500 How can mathematics, a product of human reason that does not depend on any experience, so exquisitely fit the objects of reality? 316 00:30:10.500 --> 00:30:18.500 Is human reason able to discover, unaided by experience, through pure reasoning, the features of real things? 317 00:30:18.500 --> 00:30:25.500 And his answer is, as far as the theorems of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, 318 00:30:25.500 --> 00:30:30.500 and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. 319 00:30:30.500 --> 00:30:36.500 However, the sciences of human action differ radically from the natural sciences. 320 00:30:36.500 --> 00:30:42.940 All authors eager to construct an epistemological system of the sciences of human action according 321 00:30:42.940 --> 00:30:47.840 to the pattern of the natural sciences err lamentably. 322 00:30:47.840 --> 00:30:53.580 The real thing which is the subject matter of praxeology, human action, stems from the 323 00:30:53.580 --> 00:30:57.040 same source as human reasoning. 324 00:30:57.040 --> 00:31:01.360 Action and reason are congeneric and homogeneous. 325 00:31:01.360 --> 00:31:06.600 They may even be called two different aspects of the same thing. 326 00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:12.500 That reason has the power to make clear through pure ratiocination the essential features 327 00:31:12.500 --> 00:31:19.260 of action, is a consequence of the fact that action is an offshoot of reason. 328 00:31:19.260 --> 00:31:25.160 The theorems attained by correct praxeological reasoning are not only perfectly certain and 329 00:31:25.160 --> 00:31:29.560 incontestable like the correct mathematical theorems. 330 00:31:29.560 --> 00:31:35.880 They refer, moreover, with the full rigidity of their apodictic certainty and incontestability 331 00:31:35.880 --> 00:31:41.640 to the reality of action as it appears in life and history. 332 00:31:41.640 --> 00:31:47.760 Praxeology conveys exact and precise knowledge of real things. 333 00:31:47.760 --> 00:31:53.140 The starting point of praxeology is not a choice of axioms and a decision about methods 334 00:31:53.140 --> 00:31:58.620 of procedure, but reflection about the essence of action. 335 00:31:58.620 --> 00:32:05.580 There is no action in which the praxeological categories do not appear fully and perfectly. 336 00:32:05.580 --> 00:32:12.660 There is no mode of action thinkable in which means and ends or costs and proceeds cannot 337 00:32:12.660 --> 00:32:16.940 be clearly distinguished and precisely separated. 338 00:32:16.940 --> 00:32:22.700 There is nothing which only approximately or incompletely fits the economic category 339 00:32:22.700 --> 00:32:24.660 of an exchange. 340 00:32:24.660 --> 00:32:32.060 There are only exchange and non-exchange, and with regard to any exchange, all the general 341 00:32:32.060 --> 00:32:39.680 theorems concerning exchanges are valid in their full rigidity and with all their implications. 342 00:32:39.680 --> 00:32:46.380 There are no transitions from exchange to non-exchange, or from direct exchange to indirect 343 00:32:46.380 --> 00:32:48.160 exchange. 344 00:32:48.160 --> 00:32:53.940 No experience can ever be had which would contradict these statements. 345 00:32:53.940 --> 00:32:59.260 Such an experience would be impossible in the first place for the reason that all experience 346 00:32:59.260 --> 00:33:05.960 concerning human action is conditioned by the praxeological categories and becomes possible 347 00:33:05.960 --> 00:33:08.940 only through their application. 348 00:33:08.940 --> 00:33:15.140 If we had not in our mind the schemes provided by praxeological reasoning, we should never 349 00:33:15.140 --> 00:33:19.600 be in a position to discern and to grasp any action. 350 00:33:19.600 --> 00:33:26.040 We would perceive motions, but neither buying nor selling, nor prices, wage rates, interest 351 00:33:26.040 --> 00:33:28.280 rates and so on. 352 00:33:28.280 --> 00:33:33.700 It is only through the utilization of the praxeological scheme that we become able to 353 00:33:33.700 --> 00:33:40.280 have an experience concerning an act of buying and selling, but then independently of the 354 00:33:40.280 --> 00:33:47.580 fact of whether or not our senses concomitantly perceive any motions of men and of non-human 355 00:33:47.580 --> 00:33:50.860 and Elements of the External World. 356 00:33:50.860 --> 00:33:57.700 Unaided by praxeological knowledge, we would never learn anything about media of exchange. 357 00:33:57.700 --> 00:34:03.220 If we approach coins without such pre-existing knowledge, we would see in them only round 358 00:34:03.220 --> 00:34:07.100 plates of metal, nothing more. 359 00:34:07.100 --> 00:34:13.500 Experience concerning money requires familiarity with the praxeological category, medium of 360 00:34:13.500 --> 00:34:16.820 exchange. 361 00:34:16.820 --> 00:34:22.080 Science concerning human action differs from that concerning natural phenomena in that 362 00:34:22.080 --> 00:34:27.160 it requires and presupposes praxeological knowledge. 363 00:34:27.160 --> 00:34:33.180 This is why the methods of the natural sciences are inappropriate for the study of praxeology, 364 00:34:33.180 --> 00:34:36.520 economics and history. 365 00:34:36.520 --> 00:34:42.780 In asserting the a priori character of praxeology, we are not drafting a plan for a future new 366 00:34:42.780 --> 00:34:47.800 New Science Different from the traditional sciences of human action. 367 00:34:47.800 --> 00:34:53.880 We do not maintain that the theoretical science of human action should be aprioristic, but 368 00:34:53.880 --> 00:34:58.240 that it is and always has been so. 369 00:34:58.240 --> 00:35:04.260 Every attempt to reflect upon the problems raised by human action is necessarily bound 370 00:35:04.260 --> 00:35:07.020 to aprioristic reasoning. 371 00:35:07.020 --> 00:35:12.760 It does not make any difference in this regard whether the men discussing a problem are theorists 372 00:35:12.760 --> 00:35:18.600 Interests aiming at pure knowledge only, or statesmen, politicians and regular citizens 373 00:35:18.600 --> 00:35:24.120 eager to comprehend occurring changes and to discover what kind of public policy or 374 00:35:24.120 --> 00:35:28.440 private conduct would best suit their own interests. 375 00:35:28.440 --> 00:35:33.540 People may begin arguing about the significance of any concrete experience. 376 00:35:33.540 --> 00:35:38.840 The debate inevitably turns away from the accidental and environmental features of the 377 00:35:38.840 --> 00:35:45.480 the event concerned, to an analysis of fundamental principles, and imperceptibly abandons any 378 00:35:45.480 --> 00:35:50.520 reference to the factual happenings which evoked the argument. 379 00:35:50.520 --> 00:35:56.780 The history of the natural sciences is a record of theories and hypotheses discarded because 380 00:35:56.780 --> 00:36:00.440 they were disproved by experience. 381 00:36:00.440 --> 00:36:06.600 Remember for instance the fallacies of older mechanics disproved by Galileo, or the fate 382 00:36:06.600 --> 00:36:09.340 of the Phlogiston Theory. 383 00:36:09.340 --> 00:36:13.660 No such case is recorded by the history of economics. 384 00:36:13.660 --> 00:36:20.060 The champions of logically incompatible theories claim the same events as the proof that their 385 00:36:20.060 --> 00:36:24.160 point of view has been tested by experience. 386 00:36:24.160 --> 00:36:30.720 The truth is that the experience of a complex phenomenon, and there is no other experience 387 00:36:30.720 --> 00:36:36.800 in the Realm of Human Action, can always be interpreted on the ground of various antithetic 388 00:36:36.800 --> 00:36:43.800 theories. Whether the interpretation is considered satisfactory or unsatisfactory depends on 389 00:36:43.800 --> 00:36:50.160 the appreciation of the theories in question established beforehand on the ground of a prioristic 390 00:36:50.160 --> 00:36:56.280 reasoning. History cannot teach us any general rule, 391 00:36:56.280 --> 00:37:01.720 Principle or Law There is no means to abstract from a historical 392 00:37:01.720 --> 00:37:10.060 experience a posteriori any theories or theorems concerning human conduct and policies. 393 00:37:10.060 --> 00:37:15.940 The data of history would be nothing but a clumsy accumulation of disconnected occurrences, 394 00:37:15.940 --> 00:37:22.740 a heap of confusion, if they could not be clarified, arranged and interpreted by systematic 395 00:37:22.740 --> 00:37:28.380 Praxeological Knowledge, 4. 396 00:37:28.380 --> 00:37:33.820 The Principle of Methodological Individualism. 397 00:37:33.820 --> 00:37:37.680 Praxeology deals with the actions of individual men. 398 00:37:37.680 --> 00:37:44.320 It is only in the further course of its inquiries that cognition of human cooperation is attained, 399 00:37:44.320 --> 00:37:49.700 and social action is treated as a special case of the more universal category of human 400 00:37:49.700 --> 00:37:52.460 action as such. 401 00:37:52.460 --> 00:37:57.820 This methodological individualism has been vehemently attacked by various metaphysical 402 00:37:57.820 --> 00:38:02.560 schools and disparaged as a nominalistic fallacy. 403 00:38:02.560 --> 00:38:07.820 The notion of an individual, say the critics, is an empty abstraction. 404 00:38:07.820 --> 00:38:12.600 Real man is necessarily always a member of a social whole. 405 00:38:12.600 --> 00:38:18.360 It is even impossible to imagine the existence of a man separated from the rest of mankind 406 00:38:18.360 --> 00:38:21.680 and not connected with society. 407 00:38:21.680 --> 00:38:28.920 Man as man is the product of a social evolution. His most eminent feature, reason, could only 408 00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:35.640 emerge within the framework of social mutuality. There is no thinking, which does not depend 409 00:38:35.640 --> 00:38:43.260 on the concepts and notions of language. But speech is manifestly a social phenomenon. 410 00:38:43.260 --> 00:38:49.560 Man is always the member of a collective. As the whole is both logically and temporally 411 00:38:49.560 --> 00:39:13.720 Now the controversy whether the whole or its parts are logically prior is vain. 412 00:39:13.720 --> 00:39:19.000 Logically the notions of a whole and its parts are correlative, as logical concepts they 413 00:39:19.000 --> 00:39:22.340 They are both apart from time. 414 00:39:22.340 --> 00:39:28.200 No less inappropriate with regard to our problem is the reference to the antagonism of realism 415 00:39:28.200 --> 00:39:34.360 and nominalism, both these terms being understood in the meaning which medieval scholasticism 416 00:39:34.360 --> 00:39:36.280 attached to them. 417 00:39:36.280 --> 00:39:42.840 It is uncontested that in the sphere of human action, social entities have real existence. 418 00:39:42.840 --> 00:39:49.440 Nobody ventures to deny that nations, states, municipalities, parties, religious communities 419 00:39:49.440 --> 00:39:56.140 are real factors determining the course of human events. Methodological individualism, 420 00:39:56.140 --> 00:40:01.340 far from contesting the significance of such collective wholes, considers it as one of 421 00:40:01.340 --> 00:40:07.760 its main tasks to describe and to analyze their becoming and their disappearing, their 422 00:40:07.760 --> 00:40:14.080 are changing structures and their operation, and it chooses the only method fitted to solve 423 00:40:14.080 --> 00:40:16.680 this problem satisfactorily. 424 00:40:16.680 --> 00:40:23.520 First, we must realize that all actions are performed by individuals. 425 00:40:23.520 --> 00:40:30.480 A collective operates always through the intermediary of one or several individuals, whose actions 426 00:40:30.480 --> 00:40:35.040 are related to the collective as the secondary source. 427 00:40:35.040 --> 00:40:40.800 It is the meaning which the acting individuals and all those who are touched by their action 428 00:40:40.800 --> 00:40:45.360 attribute to an action that determines its character. 429 00:40:45.360 --> 00:40:51.100 It is the meaning that marks one action as the action of an individual and another action 430 00:40:51.100 --> 00:40:55.500 as the action of the state or of the municipality. 431 00:40:55.500 --> 00:40:59.720 The hangman, not the state, executes a criminal. 432 00:40:59.720 --> 00:41:07.320 It is the meaning of those concerned that discerns in the hangman's action an action of the state. 433 00:41:07.320 --> 00:41:11.160 A group of armed men occupies a place. 434 00:41:11.160 --> 00:41:16.840 It is the meaning of those concerned which imputes this occupation not to the officers 435 00:41:16.840 --> 00:41:21.360 and soldiers on the spot, but to their nation. 436 00:41:21.360 --> 00:41:27.080 If we scrutinize the meaning of the various actions performed by individuals, we must 437 00:41:27.080 --> 00:41:32.880 must necessarily learn everything about the actions of collective wholes, for a social 438 00:41:32.880 --> 00:41:40.400 collective has no existence and reality outside of the individual member's actions. 439 00:41:40.400 --> 00:41:47.080 The life of a collective is lived in the actions of the individuals constituting its body. 440 00:41:47.080 --> 00:41:54.640 There is no social collective conceivable which is not operative in the actions of some individuals. 441 00:41:54.640 --> 00:42:00.800 The reality of a social integer consists in its directing and releasing definite actions 442 00:42:00.800 --> 00:42:03.080 on the part of individuals. 443 00:42:03.080 --> 00:42:10.720 Thus, the way to a cognition of collective wholes is through an analysis of the individual's 444 00:42:10.720 --> 00:42:12.480 actions. 445 00:42:12.480 --> 00:42:18.760 As a thinking and acting being, man emerges from his pre-human existence already as a 446 00:42:18.760 --> 00:42:20.660 social being. 447 00:42:20.660 --> 00:42:26.920 The evolution of reason, language and cooperation is the outcome of the same process. 448 00:42:26.920 --> 00:42:31.400 They were inseparably and necessarily linked together. 449 00:42:31.400 --> 00:42:35.120 But this process took place in individuals. 450 00:42:35.120 --> 00:42:39.760 It consisted in changes in the behavior of individuals. 451 00:42:39.760 --> 00:42:44.840 There is no other substance in which it occurred than the individuals. 452 00:42:44.840 --> 00:42:51.080 There is no substratum of society other than the actions of individuals. 453 00:42:51.080 --> 00:42:56.560 That there are nations, states and churches, that there is social cooperation under the 454 00:42:56.560 --> 00:43:03.440 division of labor, becomes discernible only in the actions of certain individuals. 455 00:43:03.440 --> 00:43:08.280 Nobody ever perceived a nation without perceiving its members. 456 00:43:08.280 --> 00:43:14.800 In this sense, one may say that a social collective comes into being through the actions of individuals. 457 00:43:14.800 --> 00:43:20.600 That does not mean that the individual is temporally antecedent. 458 00:43:20.600 --> 00:43:27.420 It merely means that definite actions of individuals constitute the collective. 459 00:43:27.420 --> 00:43:32.160 There is no need to argue whether a collective is the sum resulting from the addition of 460 00:43:32.160 --> 00:43:38.260 its elements or more, whether it is a being sui generis, and whether it is reasonable or 461 00:43:38.260 --> 00:43:44.980 for not to speak of its will, plans, aims and actions, and to attribute to it a distinct 462 00:43:44.980 --> 00:43:46.820 soul. 463 00:43:46.820 --> 00:43:49.300 Such pedantic talk is idle. 464 00:43:49.300 --> 00:43:55.460 A collective whole is a particular aspect of the actions of various individuals, and 465 00:43:55.460 --> 00:44:00.700 as such a real thing, determining the course of events. 466 00:44:00.700 --> 00:44:06.060 It is illusory to believe that it is possible to visualize collective wholes. 467 00:44:06.060 --> 00:44:07.820 They are never visible. 468 00:44:07.820 --> 00:44:13.220 Our cognition is always the outcome of the understanding of the meaning which acting 469 00:44:13.220 --> 00:44:16.620 men attribute to their acts. 470 00:44:16.620 --> 00:44:20.920 We can see a crowd, that is, a multitude of people. 471 00:44:20.920 --> 00:44:25.760 Whether this crowd is a mere gathering or a mass, in the sense in which this term is 472 00:44:25.760 --> 00:44:32.900 used in contemporary psychology, or an organized body or any other kind of social entity, is 473 00:44:32.900 --> 00:44:38.400 The question which can only be answered by understanding the meaning which they themselves 474 00:44:38.400 --> 00:44:45.820 attach to their presence, and this meaning is always the meaning of individuals. 475 00:44:45.820 --> 00:44:54.240 Not our senses, but understanding, a mental process, makes us recognize social entities. 476 00:44:54.240 --> 00:44:58.820 Those who want to start the study of human action from the collective units encounter 477 00:44:58.820 --> 00:45:12.820 These are an insurmountable obstacle in the fact that an individual at the same time can belong, and with the exception of the most primitive tribesmen, really belongs to various collective entities. 478 00:45:12.820 --> 00:45:25.820 The problems raised by the multiplicity of coexisting social units and their mutual antagonisms can be solved only by methodological individualism. 479 00:45:25.820 --> 00:45:29.140 I and We 480 00:45:29.140 --> 00:45:32.740 The ego is the unity of the acting being. 481 00:45:32.740 --> 00:45:40.660 It is unquestionably given and cannot be dissolved or conjured away by any reasoning or quibbling. 482 00:45:40.660 --> 00:45:48.020 The we is always the result of a summing up which puts together two or more egos. 483 00:45:48.020 --> 00:45:54.540 If somebody says I, no further questioning is necessary in order to establish the meaning. 484 00:45:54.540 --> 00:46:00.500 The same is valid with regard to the thou and, provided the person in view, is precisely 485 00:46:00.500 --> 00:46:04.220 indicated with regard to the he. 486 00:46:04.220 --> 00:46:10.980 But if a man says we, further information is needed to denote who the egos are who are 487 00:46:10.980 --> 00:46:14.080 comprised in this we. 488 00:46:14.080 --> 00:46:18.460 It is always single individuals who say we. 489 00:46:18.460 --> 00:46:24.900 And if they say it in chorus, it yet remains an utterance of single individuals. 490 00:46:24.900 --> 00:46:30.780 The we cannot act otherwise than each of them acting on his own behalf. 491 00:46:30.780 --> 00:46:36.920 They can either all act together in accord, or one of them may act for them all. 492 00:46:36.920 --> 00:46:41.520 In the latter case, the cooperation of the others consists in their bringing about the 493 00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:47.480 situation which makes one man's action effective for them too. 494 00:46:47.480 --> 00:46:53.080 Only in this sense does the officer of a social entity act for the whole. 495 00:46:53.080 --> 00:46:59.500 The individual members of the collective body either cause or allow a single man's action 496 00:46:59.500 --> 00:47:02.380 to concern them too. 497 00:47:02.380 --> 00:47:09.840 The endeavors of psychology to dissolve the ego and to unmask it as an illusion are idle. 498 00:47:09.840 --> 00:47:13.940 The praxeological ego is beyond any doubts. 499 00:47:13.940 --> 00:47:19.940 No matter what a man was, and what he may become later, in the very act of choosing 500 00:47:19.940 --> 00:47:23.540 and acting, he is an ego. 501 00:47:23.540 --> 00:47:29.920 From the pluralis logicus, and from the merely ceremonial pluralis magistaticus, we must 502 00:47:29.920 --> 00:47:33.860 distinguish the pluralis gloriosus. 503 00:47:33.860 --> 00:47:40.500 If a Canadian who never tried skating says, we are the world's foremost ice hockey players, 504 00:47:40.500 --> 00:47:46.660 Or, if an Italian boor proudly contends, we are the world's most eminent painters, nobody 505 00:47:46.660 --> 00:47:48.300 is fooled. 506 00:47:48.300 --> 00:47:54.400 But with reference to political and economic problems, the pluralis gloriosus evolves into 507 00:47:54.400 --> 00:48:00.960 the pluralis imperialis, and as such plays a significant role in paving the way for the 508 00:48:00.960 --> 00:48:07.140 acceptance of doctrines determining international economic policies. 509 00:48:07.140 --> 00:48:13.780 5. The Principle of Methodological Singularism 510 00:48:13.780 --> 00:48:19.820 No less than from the action of an individual, praxeology begins its investigations from 511 00:48:19.820 --> 00:48:26.500 the individual action. It does not deal in vague terms with human action in general, 512 00:48:26.500 --> 00:48:32.200 but with concrete action which a definite man has performed at a definite date and at 513 00:48:32.200 --> 00:48:34.320 at a Definite Place. 514 00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:39.580 But of course, it does not concern itself with the accidental and environmental features 515 00:48:39.580 --> 00:48:45.240 of this action and with what distinguishes it from all other actions, but only with what 516 00:48:45.240 --> 00:48:50.040 is necessary and universal in its performance. 517 00:48:50.040 --> 00:48:56.200 The philosophy of universalism has from time immemorial blocked access to a satisfactory 518 00:48:56.200 --> 00:49:12.480 Universalism, collectivism and conceptual realism see only holes and universals. 519 00:49:12.480 --> 00:49:20.240 They speculate about mankind, nations, states, classes, about virtue and vice, right and 520 00:49:20.240 --> 00:49:25.440 wrong, about entire classes of wants and of commodities. 521 00:49:25.440 --> 00:49:32.480 They ask, for instance, why is the value of gold higher than that of iron? 522 00:49:32.480 --> 00:49:38.100 Thus they never find solutions, but antimonies and paradoxes only. 523 00:49:38.100 --> 00:49:43.440 The best known instance is the value paradox, which frustrated even the work of the classical 524 00:49:43.440 --> 00:49:46.400 economists. 525 00:49:46.400 --> 00:49:50.040 Praxeology asks, what happens in acting? 526 00:49:50.040 --> 00:49:56.120 What does it mean to say that an individual then and there, today and here, at any time 527 00:49:56.120 --> 00:49:59.320 and at any place, acts? 528 00:49:59.320 --> 00:50:03.440 What results if he chooses one thing and rejects another? 529 00:50:03.440 --> 00:50:08.960 The act of choosing is always a decision among various opportunities open to the choosing 530 00:50:08.960 --> 00:50:10.800 individual. 531 00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:17.120 Man never chooses between virtue and vice, but only between two modes of action which 532 00:50:17.120 --> 00:50:22.360 which we call from an adopted point of view virtuous or vicious. 533 00:50:22.360 --> 00:50:29.160 A man never chooses between gold and iron in general, but always only between a definite 534 00:50:29.160 --> 00:50:34.180 quantity of gold and a definite quantity of iron. 535 00:50:34.180 --> 00:50:39.560 Every single action is strictly limited in its immediate consequences. 536 00:50:39.560 --> 00:50:47.020 If we want to reach correct conclusions, we must first of all look at these limitations. 537 00:50:47.020 --> 00:50:51.720 Human life is an unceasing sequence of single actions. 538 00:50:51.720 --> 00:50:55.400 But the single action is by no means isolated. 539 00:50:55.400 --> 00:51:01.180 It is a link in a chain of actions, which together form an action on a higher level, 540 00:51:01.180 --> 00:51:04.200 aiming at a more distant end. 541 00:51:04.200 --> 00:51:06.880 Every action has two aspects. 542 00:51:06.880 --> 00:51:12.660 It is, on the one hand, a partial action in the framework of a further stretching action, 543 00:51:12.660 --> 00:51:18.560 the performance of a fraction of the aims set by a more far-reaching action. 544 00:51:18.560 --> 00:51:24.100 It is, on the other hand, itself a whole, with regard to the actions aimed at by the 545 00:51:24.100 --> 00:51:26.740 performance of its own parts. 546 00:51:26.740 --> 00:51:32.580 It depends upon the scope of the project on which acting man is intent at the instant, 547 00:51:32.580 --> 00:51:38.040 whether the more far-reaching action, or a partial action directed to a more immediate 548 00:51:38.040 --> 00:51:41.700 end only, is thrown into relief. 549 00:51:41.700 --> 00:51:49.060 There is no need for praxeology to raise questions of the type of those raised by Gestalt psychology. 550 00:51:49.060 --> 00:51:54.220 The road to the performance of great things must always lead through the performance of 551 00:51:54.220 --> 00:51:56.260 partial tasks. 552 00:51:56.260 --> 00:52:02.180 A cathedral is something other than a heap of stones joined together, but the only procedure 553 00:52:02.180 --> 00:52:07.740 for constructing a cathedral is to lay one stone upon another. 554 00:52:07.740 --> 00:52:12.000 For the architect, the whole project is the main thing. 555 00:52:12.000 --> 00:52:18.300 For the mason, it is the single wall, and for the bricklayer, the single stones. 556 00:52:18.300 --> 00:52:24.440 What counts for praxeology is the fact that the only method to achieve greater tasks is 557 00:52:24.440 --> 00:52:30.980 to build from the foundations, step by step, part by part. 558 00:52:30.980 --> 00:52:33.380 6. 559 00:52:33.380 --> 00:52:38.780 The Individual and Changing Features of Human Action 560 00:52:38.780 --> 00:52:44.700 The content of human action, that is, the ends aimed at and the means chosen and applied 561 00:52:44.700 --> 00:52:50.580 for the attainment of these ends, is determined by the personal qualities of every acting 562 00:52:50.580 --> 00:52:52.300 man. 563 00:52:52.300 --> 00:52:57.900 Individual man is the product of a long line of zoological evolution which has shaped his 564 00:52:57.900 --> 00:53:00.540 physiological inheritance. 565 00:53:00.540 --> 00:53:06.460 He is born the offspring and the heir of his ancestors, and the precipitate and sediment 566 00:53:06.460 --> 00:53:12.180 of all that his forefathers experienced are his biological patrimony. 567 00:53:12.180 --> 00:53:19.380 When he is born, he does not enter the world in general, as such, but a definite environment. 568 00:53:19.380 --> 00:53:25.380 The innate and inherited biological qualities and all that life has worked upon him make 569 00:53:25.380 --> 00:53:29.500 a man what he is at any instant of his pilgrimage. 570 00:53:29.500 --> 00:53:32.420 They are his fate and destiny. 571 00:53:32.420 --> 00:53:38.740 His will is not free in the metaphysical sense of this term, it is determined by his background 572 00:53:38.740 --> 00:53:45.660 and all the influences to which he himself and his ancestors were exposed. 573 00:53:45.660 --> 00:53:49.300 Inheritance and environment direct a man's actions. 574 00:53:49.300 --> 00:53:53.360 They suggest to him both the ends and the means. 575 00:53:53.360 --> 00:53:57.000 He lives not simply as man in abstracto. 576 00:53:57.000 --> 00:54:03.480 He lives as a son of his family, his race, his people, and his age. 577 00:54:03.480 --> 00:54:05.840 As a citizen of his country. 578 00:54:05.840 --> 00:54:08.600 As a member of a definite social group. 579 00:54:08.600 --> 00:54:11.360 As a practitioner of a certain vocation. 580 00:54:11.360 --> 00:54:17.520 As a follower of definite religious, metaphysical, philosophical and political ideas. 581 00:54:17.520 --> 00:54:21.480 As a partisan in many feuds and controversies. 582 00:54:21.480 --> 00:54:26.120 He does not himself create his ideas and standards of value. 583 00:54:26.120 --> 00:54:28.780 He borrows them from other people. 584 00:54:28.780 --> 00:54:33.660 His ideology is what his environment enjoins upon him. 585 00:54:33.660 --> 00:54:39.460 Only very few men have the gift of thinking new and original ideas, and of changing the 586 00:54:39.460 --> 00:54:44.040 traditional body of creeds and doctrines. 587 00:54:44.040 --> 00:54:47.620 Common man does not speculate about the great problems. 588 00:54:47.620 --> 00:54:53.220 With regard to them, he relies upon other people's authority. He behaves as every decent 589 00:54:53.220 --> 00:54:59.660 fellow must behave. He is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual 590 00:54:59.660 --> 00:55:07.600 inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses 591 00:55:07.600 --> 00:55:13.260 to adopt traditional patterns, or patterns adopted by other people, because he is convinced 592 00:55:13.260 --> 00:55:32.940 Most of a man's daily behavior is simple routine. 593 00:55:32.940 --> 00:55:37.100 He performs certain acts without paying special attention to them. 594 00:55:37.100 --> 00:55:41.720 He does many things because he was trained in his childhood to do them, because other 595 00:55:41.720 --> 00:55:47.160 Other people behave in the same way and because it is customary in his environment. 596 00:55:47.160 --> 00:55:48.640 He acquires habits. 597 00:55:48.640 --> 00:55:51.420 He develops automatic reactions. 598 00:55:51.420 --> 00:55:57.080 But he indulges in these habits only because he welcomes their effects. 599 00:55:57.080 --> 00:56:02.100 As soon as he discovers that the pursuit of the habitual way may hinder the attainment 600 00:56:02.100 --> 00:56:07.440 of ends considered as more desirable, he changes his attitude. 601 00:56:07.440 --> 00:56:13.240 A man brought up in an area in which the water is clean acquires the habit of heedlessly 602 00:56:13.240 --> 00:56:16.040 drinking, washing and bathing. 603 00:56:16.040 --> 00:56:21.320 When he moves to a place in which the water is polluted by morbid germs, he will devote 604 00:56:21.320 --> 00:56:26.740 the most careful attention to procedures about which he never bothered before. 605 00:56:26.740 --> 00:56:32.520 He will watch himself permanently in order not to hurt himself by indulging unthinkingly 606 00:56:32.520 --> 00:56:37.640 in his traditional routine and his automatic reactions. 607 00:56:37.640 --> 00:56:43.260 The fact that an action is in the regular course of affairs, performed spontaneously, 608 00:56:43.260 --> 00:56:49.080 as it were, does not mean that it is not due to a conscious volition and to a deliberate 609 00:56:49.080 --> 00:56:51.320 choice. 610 00:56:51.320 --> 00:56:57.640 Indulgence in a routine, which possibly could be changed, is action. 611 00:56:57.640 --> 00:57:03.120 History is not concerned with the changing content of acting, but with its pure form 612 00:57:03.120 --> 00:57:05.920 and its categorical structure. 613 00:57:05.920 --> 00:57:13.280 The study of the accidental and environmental features of human action is the task of history. 614 00:57:13.280 --> 00:57:15.660 7. 615 00:57:15.660 --> 00:57:21.040 The Scope and the Specific Method of History 616 00:57:21.040 --> 00:57:27.600 The study of all the data of experience concerning human action is the scope of history. 617 00:57:27.600 --> 00:57:32.800 The historian collects and critically sifts all available documents. 618 00:57:32.800 --> 00:57:37.480 On the ground of this evidence, he approaches his genuine task. 619 00:57:37.480 --> 00:57:43.600 It has been asserted that the task of history is to show how events actually happened, without 620 00:57:43.600 --> 00:57:50.960 imposing presuppositions and values, vert frei, that is, neutral with regard to all value 621 00:57:50.960 --> 00:57:52.780 judgments. 622 00:57:52.780 --> 00:57:58.560 The historian's report should be a faithful image of the past, an intellectual photograph, 623 00:57:58.560 --> 00:58:03.880 as it were, giving a complete and unbiased description of all facts. 624 00:58:03.880 --> 00:58:10.620 It should reproduce before our intellectual eye the past, with all its features. 625 00:58:10.620 --> 00:58:17.780 Now a real reproduction of the past would require a duplication not humanly possible. 626 00:58:17.780 --> 00:58:23.500 History is not an intellectual reproduction, but a condensed representation of the past 627 00:58:23.500 --> 00:58:26.060 in conceptual terms. 628 00:58:26.060 --> 00:58:30.720 The historian does not simply let the events speak for themselves. 629 00:58:30.720 --> 00:58:36.780 He arranges them from the aspect of the ideas underlying the formation of the general notions 630 00:58:36.780 --> 00:58:39.740 he uses in their presentation. 631 00:58:39.740 --> 00:58:45.520 He does not report facts as they happened, but only relevant facts. 632 00:58:45.520 --> 00:58:50.440 He does not approach the documents without presuppositions, but equipped with the whole 633 00:58:50.440 --> 00:58:56.680 apparatus of his age's scientific knowledge, that is, with all the teachings of contemporary 634 00:58:56.680 --> 00:59:02.220 logic, mathematics, praxeology and natural science. 635 00:59:02.220 --> 00:59:08.960 It is obvious that the historian must not be biased by any prejudices and party tenets. 636 00:59:08.960 --> 00:59:13.720 Those writers who consider historical events as an arsenal of weapons for the conduct of 637 00:59:13.720 --> 00:59:19.800 of their party feuds are not historians but propagandists and apologists. 638 00:59:19.800 --> 00:59:25.820 They are not eager to acquire knowledge but to justify the program of their parties. 639 00:59:25.820 --> 00:59:32.940 They are fighting for the dogmas of a metaphysical, religious, national, political or social doctrine. 640 00:59:32.940 --> 00:59:39.760 They usurp the name of history for their writings as a blind in order to deceive the credulous. 641 00:59:39.760 --> 00:59:47.760 A historian must first of all aim at cognition. He must free himself from any partiality. 642 00:59:47.760 --> 00:59:53.800 He must in this sense be neutral with regard to any value judgments. 643 00:59:53.800 --> 00:59:59.920 This postulate of Wertfreiheit can easily be satisfied in the field of the aprioristic 644 00:59:59.920 --> 01:00:06.360 science, logic, mathematics and praxeology, and in the field of the experimental natural 645 01:00:06.360 --> 01:00:13.720 It is logically not difficult to draw a sharp line between a scientific, unbiased treatment 646 01:00:13.720 --> 01:00:21.220 of these disciplines and a treatment distorted by superstition, preconceived ideas and passion. 647 01:00:21.220 --> 01:00:27.800 It is much more difficult to comply with the requirement of valuational neutrality in history. 648 01:00:27.800 --> 01:00:33.740 For the subject matter of history, the concrete accidental and environmental content of human 649 01:00:33.740 --> 01:00:40.380 Human Action is value judgments and their projection into the reality of change. 650 01:00:40.380 --> 01:00:46.400 At every step of his activities, the historian is concerned with value judgments. 651 01:00:46.400 --> 01:00:53.960 The value judgments of the men whose actions he reports are the substratum of his investigations. 652 01:00:53.960 --> 01:00:59.720 It has been asserted that the historian himself cannot avoid judgments of value. 653 01:00:59.720 --> 01:01:05.780 No historian, not even the naive chronicler or newspaper reporter, registers all facts 654 01:01:05.780 --> 01:01:07.300 as they happen. 655 01:01:07.300 --> 01:01:08.780 He must discriminate. 656 01:01:08.780 --> 01:01:13.980 He must select some events which he deems worthy of being registered, and pass over 657 01:01:13.980 --> 01:01:16.860 in silence other events. 658 01:01:16.860 --> 01:01:21.920 This choice, it is said, implies in itself a value judgment. 659 01:01:21.920 --> 01:01:27.880 It is necessarily conditioned by the historian's world view, and thus not impartial, but an 660 01:01:27.880 --> 01:01:35.820 History can never be anything else than distortion of facts. 661 01:01:35.820 --> 01:01:42.780 It can never be really scientific, that is, neutral with regard to values and intent only 662 01:01:42.780 --> 01:01:45.900 upon discovering truth. 663 01:01:45.900 --> 01:01:50.920 There is, of course, no doubt that the discretion which the selection of facts places in the 664 01:01:50.920 --> 01:01:54.240 hands of the historian can be abused. 665 01:01:54.240 --> 01:01:59.320 It can and does happen that the historian's choice is guided by party bias. 666 01:01:59.320 --> 01:02:04.640 However, the problems involved are much more intricate than this popular doctrine would 667 01:02:04.640 --> 01:02:06.480 have us believe. 668 01:02:06.480 --> 01:02:11.120 Their solution must be sought on the ground of a much more thorough scrutiny of the methods 669 01:02:11.120 --> 01:02:13.520 of history. 670 01:02:13.520 --> 01:02:18.680 In dealing with a historical problem, the historian makes use of all the knowledge provided 671 01:02:18.680 --> 01:02:24.760 by Logic, Mathematics, the Natural Sciences, and especially by Praxeology. 672 01:02:24.760 --> 01:02:31.640 However, the mental tools of these non-historical disciplines do not suffice for his task. 673 01:02:31.640 --> 01:02:37.100 They are indispensable auxiliaries for him, but in themselves they do not make it possible 674 01:02:37.100 --> 01:02:41.560 to answer those questions he has to deal with. 675 01:02:41.560 --> 01:02:46.740 The course of history is determined by the actions of individuals and by the effects 676 01:02:46.740 --> 01:02:48.620 of these actions. 677 01:02:48.620 --> 01:02:54.780 The actions are determined by the value judgments of the acting individuals, that is, the ends 678 01:02:54.780 --> 01:02:59.520 which they were eager to attain, and by the means which they applied for the attainment 679 01:02:59.520 --> 01:03:01.580 of these ends. 680 01:03:01.580 --> 01:03:06.600 The choice of the means is an outcome of the whole body of technological knowledge of the 681 01:03:06.600 --> 01:03:08.980 acting individuals. 682 01:03:08.980 --> 01:03:14.480 It is, in many instances, possible to appreciate the effects of the means applied from the 683 01:03:14.480 --> 01:03:20.520 and the point of view of praxeology or of the natural sciences, but there remain a great 684 01:03:20.520 --> 01:03:26.160 many things for the elucidation of which no such help is available. 685 01:03:26.160 --> 01:03:31.840 The specific task of history for which it uses a specific method is the study of these 686 01:03:31.840 --> 01:03:37.680 value judgments and of the effects of the actions as far as they cannot be analyzed 687 01:03:37.680 --> 01:03:41.960 by the teachings of all other branches of knowledge. 688 01:03:41.960 --> 01:03:48.080 The historian's genuine problem is always to interpret things as they happened. 689 01:03:48.080 --> 01:03:53.640 But he cannot solve this problem on the ground of the theorems provided by all other sciences 690 01:03:53.640 --> 01:03:54.960 alone. 691 01:03:54.960 --> 01:04:00.840 There always remains at the bottom of each of his problems something which resists analysis 692 01:04:00.840 --> 01:04:04.280 at the hand of these teachings of other sciences. 693 01:04:04.280 --> 01:04:11.160 It is these individual and unique characteristics of each event which are studied by the understanding. 694 01:04:11.960 --> 01:04:28.960 The uniqueness or individuality which remains at the bottom of every historical fact when all the means for its interpretation provided by logic, mathematics, praxeology and the natural sciences have been exhausted is an ultimate datum. 695 01:04:28.960 --> 01:04:40.960 But whereas the natural sciences cannot say anything about their ultimate data than that they are such, history can try to make its ultimate data intelligible. 696 01:04:40.960 --> 01:04:54.960 Although it is impossible to reduce them to their causes, they would not be ultimate data if such a reduction were possible, the historian can understand them because he is himself a human being. 697 01:04:54.960 --> 01:05:08.960 In the philosophy of Bergson, this understanding is called an intuition, the sympathy with which one penetrates an object to apprehend its unique and therefore inexpressible identity. 698 01:05:08.960 --> 01:05:17.960 German epistemology calls this act das Spezifische Verstehen der Geisteswissenschaften, or simply Verstehen. 699 01:05:17.960 --> 01:05:28.960 It is the method which all historians and all other people will always apply in commenting upon human events of the past and in forecasting future events. 700 01:05:28.960 --> 01:05:36.960 The discovery and the delimitation of understanding was one of the most important contributions of modern epistemology. 701 01:05:36.960 --> 01:05:43.520 It is, to be sure, neither a project for a new science which does not yet exist, and 702 01:05:43.520 --> 01:05:49.100 is to be founded, nor the recommendation of a new method of procedure for any of the already 703 01:05:49.100 --> 01:05:51.680 existing sciences. 704 01:05:51.680 --> 01:05:58.880 The understanding must not be confused with approval, be it only conditional and circumstantial. 705 01:05:58.880 --> 01:06:04.680 The historian, the ethnologist and the psychologist sometimes register actions which are, for 706 01:06:04.680 --> 01:06:11.840 and their feelings simply repulsive and disgusting. They understand them only as actions, that 707 01:06:11.840 --> 01:06:18.000 is, in establishing the underlying aims and the technological and praxeological methods 708 01:06:18.000 --> 01:06:24.880 applied for their execution. To understand an individual case does not mean to justify 709 01:06:24.880 --> 01:06:32.160 or to excuse it. Neither must understanding be confused with the act of aesthetic enjoyment 710 01:06:32.160 --> 01:06:41.240 of a Phenomenon, Empathy, Einfühlung and Understanding are two radically different attitudes. 711 01:06:41.240 --> 01:06:46.440 It is a different thing, on the one hand, to understand a work of art historically, 712 01:06:46.440 --> 01:06:51.960 to determine its place, its meaning and its importance in the flux of events, and, on 713 01:06:51.960 --> 01:06:57.020 the other hand, to appreciate it emotionally as a work of art. 714 01:06:57.020 --> 01:07:01.520 One can look at a cathedral with the eyes of a historian, but one can look at the same 715 01:07:01.520 --> 01:07:15.040 The same individuals are capable of both modes of reaction, of the aesthetic appreciation, 716 01:07:15.040 --> 01:07:18.920 and of the scientific grasp of understanding. 717 01:07:18.920 --> 01:07:23.940 The understanding establishes the fact that an individual or a group of individuals have 718 01:07:23.940 --> 01:07:30.240 engaged in a definite action emanating from definite value judgments and choices and aiming 719 01:07:30.240 --> 01:07:35.800 at Definite Ends and that they have applied for the attainment of these ends definite 720 01:07:35.800 --> 01:07:43.040 means suggested by definite technological, therapeutical and praxeological doctrines. 721 01:07:43.040 --> 01:07:48.500 It furthermore tries to appreciate the effects and the intensity of the effects brought about 722 01:07:48.500 --> 01:07:55.220 by an action. It tries to assign to every action its relevance, that is, its bearing 723 01:07:55.220 --> 01:07:58.140 upon the course of events. 724 01:07:58.140 --> 01:08:04.200 The scope of understanding is the metal grasp of phenomena which cannot be totally elucidated 725 01:08:04.200 --> 01:08:10.700 by logic, mathematics, praxeology and the natural sciences to the extent that they cannot 726 01:08:10.700 --> 01:08:14.340 be cleared up by all these sciences. 727 01:08:14.340 --> 01:08:20.260 It must never contradict the teachings of these other branches of knowledge. 728 01:08:20.260 --> 01:08:26.380 The real corporeal existence of the devil is attested by innumerable historical documents 729 01:08:26.380 --> 01:08:33.460 which are rather reliable in all other regards. Many tribunals in due process of law have 730 01:08:33.460 --> 01:08:38.780 on the basis of the testimony of witnesses and the confessions of defendants established 731 01:08:38.780 --> 01:08:45.740 the fact that the devil had carnal intercourse with witches. However, no appeal to understanding 732 01:08:45.740 --> 01:08:52.100 could justify a historian's attempt to maintain that the devil really existed and interfered 733 01:08:52.100 --> 01:08:58.140 with Human Events, otherwise than in the visions of an excited human brain. 734 01:08:58.140 --> 01:09:03.660 While this is generally admitted with regard to the natural sciences, there are some historians 735 01:09:03.660 --> 01:09:07.940 who adopt another attitude with regard to economic theory. 736 01:09:07.940 --> 01:09:13.820 They try to oppose to the theorems of economics and appeal to documents allegedly proving 737 01:09:13.820 --> 01:09:17.440 things incompatible with these theorems. 738 01:09:17.440 --> 01:09:24.320 They do not realize that complex phenomena can neither prove nor disprove any theorem, 739 01:09:24.320 --> 01:09:29.800 and therefore cannot bear witness against any statement of a theory. 740 01:09:29.800 --> 01:09:35.360 Economic history is possible only because there is an economic theory capable of throwing 741 01:09:35.360 --> 01:09:38.560 light upon economic actions. 742 01:09:38.560 --> 01:09:43.900 If there were no economic theory, reports concerning economic facts would be nothing 743 01:09:43.900 --> 01:09:49.460 Having more than a collection of unconnected data open to any arbitrary interpretation.