Professor Hayek’s Philosophy

Murray, A.H. “Professor Hayek's Philosophy.” Economica 12 (August 1945): 149–162.

Excerpt:

“In a series of articles the importance of which cannot be overestimated for the theory of method of economics, entitled Scientism and the Study of Society, Prof. Hayek offers what may legitimately be called a philosophic criticism of the tendencies towards “planning” and “engineering” in contemporary economic theory. The social sciences have grown up almost surreptitiously, catching the philosopher unawares, so that he has not, generally speaking, turned his critical and analytical activities on these branches of knowledge and the methods employed by them to any great extent and certainly not to the extent to which he has devoted his attention to the methods and subject matter of the “natural” sciences. Also the separation which grew up, especially during the nineteenth century, between philosophers and scientists when philosophers lived in ivory towers—according to an eminent historian—and which has been continued in the twentieth century wherein scientists have retired into the ivory towers of mathematical abstraction, has tended to withdraw the social sciences from the sphere of philosophy.

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