Milton Friedman
"The Methodology of Positive Economics"
In Essays In Positive Economics
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 3-16, 30-43.
The Methodology of Positive Economics*
In his admirable book on The Scope and Method of Political
Economy, John Neville Keynes distinguishes among "a positive
science . . . a body of systematized knowledge concerning what is; a
normative or regulative science ... a body of systematized knowledge
discussing criteria of what ought to be . . . ; an art ... a system of
rules for the attainment of a given end"; comments that "confusion
between them is common and has been the source of many
mischievous errors"; and urges the importance of "recognizing a
distinct positive science of political economy."1
This paper is concerned primarily with certain methodological
problems that arise in constructing the "distinct positive science"
Keynes called for - in particular, the problem how to decide whether
a suggested hypothesis or theory should be tentatively accepted as
part of the "body of systematized knowledge concerning what is." But
the confusion Keynes laments is still so rife and so much of a
hindrance to the recognition that economics can be, and in part is, a
positive science that it seems well to preface the main body of the
paper with a few remarks about the relation, between positive and
normative economics.
1. THE RELATION BETWEEN POSITIVE AND NORMATIVE
ECONOMICS
Confusion between positive and normative economics is to some
extent inevitable. The subject matter of economics is regarded by
almost everyone as vitally important to himself and within the range
of his own experience and competence; it is
* I have incorporated bodily in this article without special reference
most of my brief "Comment" in A Survey of Contemporary Economics,
Vol. II (B. F. Haley, ed.) (Chicago: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1952), pp.
455-57.
I am indebted to Dorothy S. Brady, Arthur F. Burns, and George J.
Stigler for helpful comments and criticism.
1. (London: Macmillan 4 Co., 1891), pp. 34-35 and 46.
3
4
the source of continuous and extensive controversy and the occasion
for frequent legislation. Self-proclaimed "experts" speak with many
voices and can hardly all be regarded as disinterested; in any event,
on questions that matter so much, "expert" opinion could hardly be
accepted solely on faith even if the "experts" were nearly unanimous
and clearly disinterested.2
The conclusions of positive economics
seem to be, and are, immediately relevant to important normative
problems, to questions of what ought to be done and how any given
goal can be attained. Laymen and experts alike are inevitably
tempted to shape positive conclusions to fit strongly held normative
preconceptions and to reject positive conclusions if their normative,
implications - or what are said to be their normative implications are
unpalatable.
Positive economics is in principle independent of any particular
ethical position or normative judgments. As Keynes says, it deals with
"what is," not with "what ought to be." Its task is to provide a system
of generalizations that can be used to make correct predictions about
the consequences of any change in circumstances. Its performance is
to be judged by the precision, scope, and conformity with experience
of the predictions it yields. In short, positive economics is, or can be,
an "objective" science, in precisely the same sense as any of the
physical sciences. Of course, the fact that economics deals with the
interrelations of human beings, and that the investigator is himself
part of the subject matter being investigated in a more intimate sense
than in the physical sciences, raises special difficulties in achieving
objectivity at the same time that it provides the social scientist with a
class of data not available to the physical
2. Social science or economics is by no means peculiar in this respect witness
the importance of personal beliefs and of "home" remedies in
medicine wherever obviously convincing evidence for "expert" opinion is
lacking. The current prestige and acceptance of the views of physical
scientists in their fields of specialization - and,, all too often, in other
fields as well - derives, not from faith alone, but from the evidence of
their works, the success of their predictions, and the dramatic
achievements from applying, their results. When economics seemed to
provide such evidence of its worth, in Great Britain in the first half of the
nineteenth century, the prestige and acceptance of "scientific economics"
rivaled the current prestige of the physical sciences.
5
scientist. But neither the one nor the other is, in my view, a fundamental
distinction between the two groups of sciences.3
Normative economics and the art of economics, on the other hand,
cannot be independent of positive economics. Any policy conclusion
necessarily rests on a prediction about the consequences of doing one
thing rather than another, a prediction that must be based - implicitly
or explicitly - on positive economics. There is not, of course, a
one-to-one relation between policy conclusions and the conclusions
of positive economics; if there were, there would be no separate
normative science. Two individuals may agree on the consequences
of a particular piece of legislation. One may regard them as desirable
on balance and so favor the legislation; the other, as undesirable and
so oppose the legislation.
I venture the judgment, however, that currently in the Western
world, and especially in the United States, differences about
economic policy among disinterested citizens derive predominantly
from different predictions about the economic consequences of taking
action - differences that in principle can be eliminated by the
progress of positive economics - rather than from fundamental
differences in basic values, differences about which men can
ultimately only fight. An obvious and not unimportant example is
minimum-wage legislation. Underneath the welter of arguments
offered for and against such legislation there is an underlying
consensus on the objective of achieving a "living wage" for all, to use
the ambiguous phrase so common in such discussions. The difference
of opinion is largely grounded on an implicit or explicit difference in
predictions about the efficacy of this particular means in furthering
the agreed-on end. Proponents believe (predict) that legal minimum
wages diminish poverty by raising the wages of those receiving less
than the minimum wage as well as of some receiving more than the
3. The interaction between the observer and the process observed that is
so prominent a feature of the social sciences, besides its more obvious
parallel in the physical sciences, has a more subtle counterpart in the
indeterminacy principle arising out of the interaction between the process
of measurement and the phenomena being measured. And both have a
counterpart in pure logic in Godel's theorem, asserting the impossibility
of a comprehensive self-contained logic. It is an open question whether
all three can be regarded as different formulations of an even more
general principle.
6
minimum wage without any counterbalancing increase in the number
of people entirely unemployed or employed less advantageously than
they otherwise would be. Opponents believe (predict) that legal
minimum wages increase poverty by increasing the number of people
who are unemployed or employed less advantageously and that this
more than offsets any favorable effect on the wages of those who
remain employed. Agreement about the economic consequences of the
legislation might not produce complete agreement about its
desirability, for differences might still remain about its political or
social consequences; but, given agreement on objectives, it would
certainly go a long way toward producing consensus.
Closely related differences in positive analysis underlie divergent
views about the appropriate role and place of trade-unions and the
desirability of direct price and wage controls and of tariffs. Different
predictions about the importance of so-called "economies of scale"
account very largely for divergent views about the desirability or
necessity of detailed government regulation of industry and even of
socialism rather than private enterprise. And this list could be
extended indefinitely.4
Of course, my judgment that the major
differences about economic policy in the Western world are of this
kind is itself a "positive" statement to be accepted or rejected on the
basis of empirical evidence.
If this judgment is valid, it means that a consensus on "correct"
economic policy depends much less on the progress of normative
economics proper than, on the progress of a positive economics
yielding conclusions that are, and deserve to be, widely accepted. It
means also that a major reason for
4. One rather more complex example is stabilization policy.
Superficially, divergent views on this question seem to reflect differences
in objectives; but I believe that this impression is misleading and that at
bottom the different views reflect primarily different judgments about the
source of fluctuations in economic activity and the effect of alternative
countercyclical action. For one major positive consideration that accounts
for much of the divergence see "The Effects of a Full-Employment Policy
on Economic Stability: A Formal Analysis," infra, pp. 117-32. For a
summary of the present state of professional views on this question see
"The Problem of Economic Instability," a report of a subcommittee of the
Committee on Public Issues of the American Economic Association,
American Economic Review, XL (September, 1950), 501-38.
7
distinguishing positive. economics sharply from normative economics
is precisely the contribution that can thereby be made to
agreement about policy.
II. POSITIVE ECONOMICS
The ultimate goal of a positive science is the development of a
"theory" or, "hypothesis" that yields valid and meaningful (i.e., not
truistic) predictions about phenomena not yet observed. Such a theory
is, in general, a complex intermixture of two elements. In part, it is a
"language" designed to promote "systematic and organized methods
of reasoning."5
In part, it is a body of substantive hypotheses
designed to abstract essential features of complex reality.
Viewed as a language, theory has no substantive content; it is a set
of tautologies. Its function is to serve as a filing system for
organizing empirical material and facilitating our understanding of it;
and the criteria by which it is to be judged are those appropriate to a
filing system. Are, the categories clearly and precisely defined? Are
they exhaustive? Do we know where to file each individual, item, or
is there considerable ambiguity? Is the system of headings and
subheadings so designed that we can quickly find an item we want, or
must we hunt from place to place? Are the items we shall want to
consider jointly filed together? Does the filing system avoid elaborate
cross-references?
The answers to these questions depend partly on logical, partly on
factual, considerations. The canons 'of formal logic alone can show
whether a particular language is complete and consistent, that is,
whether propositions in the language are "right" or "wrong." Factual
evidence alone can show whether the categories of the "analytical
filing system" have a meaningful empirical counterpart, that is,
whether they are useful in analyzing a particular class of concrete
problems.6
The simple example of "supply" and "demand" illustrates
both this point and the
5. Final quoted phrase from Alfred Marshall, "The Present Position of
Economics" (1885), reprinted in Memorials of Alfred Marshall, ed. A. C.
Pigou (London: Macmillan & Co., 1925), p. 164. See also "The
Marshallian Demand Curve," infra, pp. 56-57, 90-91.
6. See 'Lange on Price Flexibility and Employment: A Methodological
Criticism," infra, pp. 282-89.
8
preceding list of analogical questions. Viewed as elements of the
language of economic theory, these are the two major categories into
which factors affecting the relative prices of products or factors of
production are classified. The usefulness of the dichotomy depends on
the "empirical generalization that an enumeration of the forces
affecting demand in any problem and of the forces affecting supply
will yield two lists that contain few items in common.7
Now this
generalization is valid for markets like the final market for a
consumer good. In such a market there is a clear and sharp distinction
between the economic units that can be regarded as demanding the
product and those that can be regarded as supplying it. There is
seldom much doubt whether a particular factor should be classified as
affecting supply, on the one hand, or demand, on the other; and there
is seldom much necessity for considering cross-effects
(cross-references) between the two categories. In these cases the
simple and even obvious step of filing the relevant factors under the
headings of "supply" and "demand" effects a great simplification of
the problem and is an effective safeguard against fallacies that,
otherwise tend to occur. But the generalization is not always valid.
For example, it is not valid for the day-to-day fluctuations of prices in
a primarily speculative market, Is a rumor of an increased
excess-profits tax, for example, to be regarded as a factor operating
primarily on today's supply of corporate equities in the stock market
or on today's demand for them? In similar fashion, almost every
factor can with about as much justification be classified under the
heading "supply" as under the heading "demand." These concepts can
still be used and may not be entirely pointless; they are still "right"
but clearly less useful than in the first example because they have no
meaningful empirical counterpart.
Viewed as a body of substantive hypotheses, theory is to be
judged by its predictive power for the class of phenomena which it is
intended to "explain." Only factual evidence can show whether it is
"right" or "wrong" or, better, tentatively "accepted" as valid or
"rejected." As I shall argue at greater length below, the only relevant
test of the validity of a hypothesis is
7. "The Marshallian Demand Curve," infra, p. 57.
9
comparison I of its predictions with experience. The hypothesis
is rejected if its predictions are contradicted ("frequently" or
more often than predictions from an alternative hypothesis);
it is accepted if its predictions are not contradicted; great
confidence is attached to it if it has survived many opportunities
for contradiction. Factual evidence can never "prove" a hypothesis;
it can only fail to disprove it, which is what we generally
mean when we say, somewhat inexactly, that the hypothesis has
been "confirmed" by experience.
To avoid confusion, it should perhaps be noted explicitly that the
"predictions" by which the validity of a hypothesis is tested need not
be about phenomena that have not yet occurred, that is, need not be
forecasts of future events; they may be about phenomena that have
occurred but observations on which have not yet been made or are
not known to the person making the prediction. For example, a
hypothesis may imply that such and such must have happened in
1906, given some other known circumstances. If a search of the
records reveals that such and such did happen, the prediction is
confirmed; if it reveals that such and such did not happen, the
prediction is contradicted.
The validity of a hypothesis in this sense is not by itself a
sufficient criterion for choosing among alternative hypotheses.
Observed facts are necessarily finite in number; possible hypotheses,
infinite. If there is one hypothesis that is consistent with the available
evidence, there are always an infinite number that are.8
For example,
suppose a specific excise tax on a particular commodity produces a
rise in price equal to the amount of the tax. This is consistent with
competitive conditions, a stable demand curve, and a horizontal and
stable supply curve. But it is also consistent with competitive
conditions and a positively or negatively sloping supply curve with
the required compensating shift in the demand curve or the supply
curve; with monopolistic conditions, constant marginal costs, and
stable demand curve, of the particular shape required to produce this
result; and so on indefinitely. Additional evidence with which the
8. The qualification is necessary because the "evidence" may be
internally contradictory, so there may be no hypothesis consistent with it.
See also "Lange on Price Flexibility and Employment," infra, pp.
282-83.
10
hypothesis is to be consistent may rule out some of these possibilities;
it can never reduce them to a single possibility alone capable
of being consistent with the finite evidence. The choice among
alternative hypotheses equally consistent with the available evidence
must to some extent be arbitrary, though there is general agreement
that relevant considerations are suggested by the criteria "simplicity"
and "fruitfulness," themselves notions that defy completely objective
specification. A theory is "simpler" the less the initial knowledge
needed to make a prediction within a given field of phenomena; it is
more "fruitful" the more precise the resulting prediction, the wider
the area within which the theory yields predictions, and the more
additional lines for further research it suggests. Logical completeness
and consistency are relevant but play a subsidiary role; their function
is to assure that the hypothesis says what it is intended to say and
does so alike for all users-they play the same role here as checks for
arithmetical accuracy do in statistical computations.
Unfortunately, we can seldom test particular predictions in the
social sciences by experiments explicitly designed to eliminate what
are judged to be the most important disturbing influences. Generally,
we must rely on evidence cast up by the "experiments" that happen to
occur. The inability to conduct so-called "controlled experiments"
does not, in my view, reflect a basic difference between the social
and physical sciences both because it is not peculiar to the social
sciences - witness astronomy and because the distinction between a
controlled experiment and uncontrolled experience is at best one of
degree. No experiment can be completely controlled, and every
experience is partly controlled, in the sense that some disturbing
influences are relatively constant in the course of it.
Evidence cast up by experience is abundant and frequently as
conclusive as that from contrived experiments; thus the inability to
conduct experiments is not a fundamental obstacle to testing
hypotheses by the success of their predictions. But such evidence is
far more difficult to interpret. It is frequently complex and always
indirect and incomplete. Its collection is often arduous, and its
interpretation generally requires subtle
11
analysis and involved chains of reasoning, which seldom carry real
conviction. The denial to economics of the dramatic and direct
evidence of the "crucial" experiment does hinder the adequate testing
of hypotheses; but this is much less significant than the difficulty it
places in the way of achieving a reasonably prompt and wide
consensus on the conclusions justified by the available evidence. It
renders the weeding-out of unsuccessful hypotheses slow and
difficult. They are seldom downed for good and are always cropping
up again.
There is, of course, considerable variation in these respects.
Occasionally, experience casts up evidence that is about as direct,
dramatic, and convincing as any that could be provided by
controlled experiments. Perhaps the most obviously important
example is the evidence from inflation on the hypothesis that a
substantial increase in the quantity of money within a relatively
short period is accompanied by a substantial increase in prices.
Here the evidence is dramatic, and the chain of reasoning
required to interpret it is relatively short. Yet, despite numerous
instances of substantial rises in prices, their essentially one-to
one correspondence with substantial rises in the stock of money,
and, the wide variation in other circumstances that might appear
to be relevant, each new experience of inflation brings forth
vigorous contentions, and not only by the lay public, that the
rise in the stock of money is either an incidental effect of a rise
in prices produced by other factors or a purely fortuitous and
unnecessary concomitant of the price rise.
One effect of the difficulty of testing substantive economic
hypotheses has been to foster a retreat into purely formal or
tautological analysis.9
As already, noted, tautologies have an
extremely important place in economics and other sciences as a
specialized language or "analytical filing system." Beyond this,
formal logic and mathematics, which are both tautologies, are
essential aids in checking the correctness of reasoning, discovering
the implications of hypotheses, and determining whether supposedly
different hypotheses may not really be equivalent or wherein the
differences lie..
But economic theory must be more than a structure of tautologies
9. See "Lange on Price Flexibility and Employment," infra, passim.
12 Essays in Positive Economics
if it is to be able to predict and not merely describe the consequences
of action; if it is to be something different from disguised
mathematics.10
And the usefulness of the tautologies themselves
ultimately depends, as noted above, on the acceptability of the
substantive hypotheses that suggest the particular categories into
which they organize the refractory empirical phenomena.
A more serious effect of the difficulty of testing economic
hypotheses by their predictions is to foster misunderstanding of the
role of empirical evidence in theoretical work. Empirical evidence is
vital at two different, though closely related, stages: in constructing
hypotheses and in testing their validity. Full and comprehensive
evidence on the phenomena to be generalized or "explained" by a
hypothesis, besides its obvious value in suggesting new hypotheses,
is needed to assure that a hypothesis explains what it sets out to
explain - that its implications for such phenomena are not
contradicted in advance by experience that has already been
observed.11
Given that the hypothesis is
10. See also Milton Friedman and L. J. Savage, "The Expected-Utility
Hypothesis and the Measurability of Utility," Journal of Political
Economy, LX (December, 1952), 463-74, esp. pp. 465-67.
11. In recent years some economists, particularly a group connected
with the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics at the University
of Chicago, have placed great emphasis on a division of this step of
selecting a hypothesis consistent with known evidence into two substeps:
first, the selection of a class of admissible hypotheses from all possible
hypotheses (the choice of a "Model" in their terminology) ; second, the
selection, of one hypothesis from this class (the choice of a "structure").
This subdivision may be heuristically valuable in some kinds of work,
particularly in promoting a systematic use of available statistical evidence
and theory. From a methodological point of view, however, it'is an
entirely arbitrary subdivision of the process of deciding on a particular
hypothesis that is on a par with many other subdivisions that may be
convenient for one purpose or another or that may suit the psychological
needs of particular investigators.
One consequence of this particular subdivision has been to give rise to
the so-called "identification" problem. As noted above, if one hypothesis
is consistent with available evidence, an infinite number are. But, while
this is true for the class of hypotheses as a whole, it may not be true of the
subclass obtained in the first of the above two steps-the "model." It may be
that the evidence to be used to select the final hypothesis from the subclass
can be consistent with at most one hypothesis in it, in which case the
"model" is said to be "identified"; otherwise it is said to be "unidentified."
As is clear from this way of describing the concept of "identification," it is
essentially a special case of the more general
13
consistent with the evidence at hand, its further testing involves
deducing from it new facts capable of being observed but not
previously known and checking these deduced facts against additional
empirical evidence. For this test to be relevant, the deduced
facts must be about the class of phenomena the hypothesis is
designed to explain; and they must be well enough defined so that
observation can show them to be wrong.
The two stages of constructing hypotheses and testing their
validity are related in two different respects. In the first place, the
particular facts that enter at each stage are partly an accident of the
collection of data and the knowledge of the particular investigator.
The facts that serve as a test of the implications of a hypothesis
might equally well have been among the raw material used to
construct it, and conversely. In the second place, the process never
begins from scratch; the so-called "initial stage" itself always
involves comparison of the implications of an earlier set of
hypotheses with observation; the contradiction of these implications
is the stimulus to the construction of new
problem of selecting among the alternative hypotheses equally consistent
with the evidence-a problem that must be decided by some such arbitrary
principle as Occam's razor. The introduction of two substeps in selecting a
hypothesis' makes this problem arise at the two corresponding stages and
gives it a special cast. While the class of all hypotheses is always
unidentified, the subclass in a "model" need not be, so the problem arises
of conditions that a "model" must satisfy to be identified. However useful
the two substeps may be in some contexts, their introduction raises the
danger that different criteria will unwittingly be used in making the same
kind-of choice among alternative hypotheses at two different stages.
On the general methodological approach discussed in this footnote see
Tryvge Haavelmo, "The Probability Approach in Econometrics,"
Econometrica, Vol. XII (1944), Supplement; Jacob Marschak, "Economic
Structure, Path, Policy, and Prediction," American Economic Review,
XXXVII, (May, 1947), 81-84, and "Statistical Inference in Economics: An
Introduction," in T. C. Koopmans (ed.), Statistical Inference in Dynamic
Economic Models (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1950); T. C,
Koopmans, "Statistical Estimation of Simultaneous Economic Relations,"
Journal of the American Statistical Association, XL (December, 1945),
448-66; Gershon Cooper, "The Role of Economic Theory in Econometric
Models," Journal of Farm Economics, XXX (February, 1948), 101-16. On
the identification problem see Koopmans, "Identification Problems in
Econometric Model Construction," Econometrica, XVII (April, 1949),
125-44; Leonid Hurwicz, "Generalization of the Concept of
Identification," in Koopmans (ed.), Statistical Inference in Dynamic
Economic Models.
14
hypotheses or revision of old ones. So the two methodologically distinct
stages are always proceeding jointly.
Misunderstanding about this apparently straightforward process
centers on the phrase "the class of phenomena the hypothesis is
designed to explain." The difficulty in the social sciences of getting
new evidence for this class of phenomena and of judging its
conformity with the implications of the hypothesis makes it tempting
to suppose that other, more readily available, evidence is equally
relevant to the validity of the hypothesis-to suppose that hypotheses
have not only "implications" but also "assumptions" and that the
conformity of these "assumptions" to "reality" is a test of the validity
of the hypothesis different from or additional to the test by
implications. This widely held view is fundamentally wrong and
productive of much mischief. Far from, providing an easier means
for sifting valid from invalid hypotheses, it only confuses the issue,
promotes misunderstanding about the significance of empirical
evidence for economic theory, produces a misdirection of much
intellectual effort devoted to the development of positive economics,
and impedes the attainment of consensus on tentative hypotheses in
positive economics.
In so far as a theory can be said to have "assumptions" at all, and in
so far as their "realism" can be judged independently of the validity of
predictions, the relation between the significance of a theory and the
"realism" of its "assumptions" is almost the opposite of that suggested by
the view under criticism. Truly important and significant hypotheses will
be found to have "assumptions" that are wildly inaccurate descriptive
representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the
theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions (in this sense).12
The reason
is simple. A hypothesis is important if it "explains" much by little, that
is, if it abstracts the common and crucial elements from the mass of
complex and detailed circumstances surrounding the phenomena to be
explained and permits valid predictions on the basis of them alone. To be
important, therefore, a hypothesis must be descriptively false in its
assumptions; it
12. The converse of the proposition does not- of course hold:
assumptions that are unrealistic (in this sense) do not guarantee a
significant theory.
15
takes account of, and accounts for, none of the many other attendant
circumstances, since its very success shows them to be irrelevant for
the phenomena to be explained.
To put this point less paradoxically, the relevant question to ask
about the "assumptions" of a theory is not whether they are
descriptively "realistic," for they never are, but whether they are
sufficiently good approximations for the purpose in hand. And this
question can be answered only by seeing whether the theory works,
which means whether it yields sufficiently accurate predictions. The
two supposedly independent tests thus reduce to one test.
The theory of monopolistic and imperfect competition is one
example of the neglect in economic theory of these propositions. The
development of this analysis was explicitly motivated, and its wide
acceptance and approval largely explained, by the belief that the
assumptions of "perfect competition" or, "perfect monopoly" said to
underlie neoclassical economic theory are a false image of reality.
And this belief was itself based almost entirely on the directly
perceived descriptive inaccuracy of the assumptions rather than on
any recognized contradiction of predictions derived from neoclassical
economic theory. The lengthy discussion on marginal analysis in the
American Economic Review some years ago is an even clearer,
though much less important, example. The articles on both sides of
the controversy largely neglect what seems to me clearly the main
issue - the conformity to experience of the implications of, the
marginal analysis - and concentrate on the largely irrelevant question
whether businessmen do or do not in fact reach their decisions by
consulting schedules, or curves, or multivariable functions showing
marginal cost and marginal revenue.13
Perhaps these
13. See R. A. Lester, "Shortcomings of Marginal Analysis for
Wage-Employment Problems," American Economic Review, XXXVI
(March, 1946), 62-82; Fritz Machlup, "Marginal Analysis and Empirical
Research," American Economic Review, XXXVI (September, 1946),
519-54; R. A. Lester, "Marginalism, Minimum Wages, and Labor
Markets," American Economic Review, XXXVII (March, 1947), 135-48;
Fritz Machlup, "Rejoinder to an Antimarginalist," American Economic
Review, XXXVII (March, 1947), 148-54; G. J. Stigler, "Professor Lester
and the Marginalists," American Economic Review, XXXVII (March,
1947), 154-57; H. M. Oliver, Jr., "Marginal Theory and Business
Behavior," American Economic Review,, XXXVII (June, 1947), 375-83;
R. A. Gordon,
16
two examples, and the many others they readily suggest, will
serve to justify a more extensive discussion of the methodological
principles involved than might otherwise seem appropriate.
"Short-Period Price Determination in Theory and Practice," American
Economic Review, XXXVIII (June, 1948), 265-88.
It should be noted that, along with much material purportedly
bearing on the validity of the "assumptions" of marginal theory, Lester
does refer to evidence on the conformity of experience with the
implications of the theory, citing the reactions of employment in
Germany to the Papen plan and in the United States to changes in
minimum-wage legislation as examples of lack of conformity.
However, Stigler's brief comment is the only one of the other papers
that refers to this evidence. It should also be noted that Machlup's
thorough and careful exposition of the logical structure and meaning
of marginal analysis is called for by the misunderstandings on this
score that mar Lester's paper and almost conceal the evidence he
presents that is relevant to the key issue he raises. But, in Machlup's
emphasis on the logical structure, he comes perilously close to presenting
the theory as a pure tautology, though it is evident at a number
of points that he is aware of this danger and anxious to avoid it. The
papers by Oliver and Gordon are the most extreme in the exclusive
concentration on the conformity of the behavior of businessmen with
the "assumptions" of the theory.
30
V. SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR ECONOMIC ISSUES
The abstract methodological issues we have been discussing have
a direct bearing on the perennial criticism of "orthodox" economic
theory as "unrealistic" as well as on the attempts that have been
made to reformulate theory to meet this charge. Economics is a
"dismal" science because it assumes man to be selfish and
money-grubbing, "a lightning calculator of pleasures and pains, who
oscillates like a homogeneous globule of desire of happiness under
the impulse of stimuli that shift him about the area, but leave him
intact"20
; it rests on outmoded psychology and must be reconstructed
in line with each new development in psychology; it assumes men, or
at least businessmen, to be "in a continuous state of 'alert,' ready to
change prices and/or pricing rules whenever their sensitive intuitions
. . . detect a change in demand and supply conditions";21
it
20. Thorstein Veblen, "Why Is Economics Not an Evolutionary
Science?" (1898), reprinted in The Place of Science in Modern
Civilization (New York, 1919), p. 73.
21. Oliver, op. cit, p. 381.
31
assumes markets to be perfect, competition to be pure, and
commodities, labor, and capital to be homogeneous.
As we have seen, criticism of this type is largely beside the point
unless supplemented by evidence that a hypothesis differing in one or
another of these respects from the theory being criticized yields
better predictions for as wide a range of phenomena. Yet most such
criticism is not so supplemented; it is based almost entirely on
supposedly directly perceived discrepancies between the
"assumptions" and the "real world." A particularly clear example is
furnished by the recent criticisms of the maximization-of-returns
hypothesis on the grounds that businessmen do not and indeed cannot
behave as the theory "assumes" they do. The evidence cited to
support this assertion is generally taken either from the answers
given by businessmen to questions about the factors affecting their
decisions - a procedure for testing economic theories that is about on
a par with testing theories of longevity by asking octogenarians how
they account for their long life - or from descriptive studies of the
decision-making activities of individual firms.22
Little if any evidence
is ever cited on the conformity of businessmen's actual market
behavior - what they do rather than what they say they do - with the
implications of the hypothesis being criticized, on the one hand, and
of an alternative hypothesis, on the other.
22. See H. D. Henderson, "The Significance of the Rate of Interest,"
Oxford Economic Papers, No. I (October, 1938), pp. 1-13; J. E. Meade
and P. W. S. Andrews, "Summary of Replies to Questions on Effects of
Interest Rates," Oxford Economic Papers, No. I (October, 1938), pp.
14-31; R. F. Harrod, "Price, and Cost in Entrepreneurs' Policy," Oxford
Economic Papers, No. 2 (May, 1939), pp. 1-11; and R. J. Hall and C. J.
Hitch, "Price Theory and Business Behavior," Oxford Economic Papers,
No. 2 (May, 1939), pp. 12-45; Lester, "Shortcomings of Marginal
Analysis for Wage-Employment Problems," op. cit.; Gordon, op. cit. See
Fritz Machlup, "Marginal Analysis and Empirical Research," op. cit.,
esp. Sec. II, for detailed criticisms of questionnaire methods.
I do not mean to imply that questionnaire studies of businessmen's or
others' motives or beliefs about the forces affecting their behavior are
useless for all purposes in economics. They may be extremely valuable in
suggesting leads to follow in accounting for divergencies between
predicted and observed results; that is, in constructing new hypotheses or
revising old ones. Whatever their suggestive value in this respect, they
seem to me almost entirely useless as a means. of testing the validity of
economic hypotheses. See my comment on Albert G. Hart's paper,
"Liquidity and Uncertainty," American Economic Review, XXXIX (May,
1949), 198-99.
32
A theory or its "assumptions" cannot possibly be thoroughly
"realistic" in the immediate descriptive sense so often assigned, to
this term. A completely "realistic" theory of the wheat market. would
have to include not only the conditions directly underlying the supply
and demand for wheat but also the kind of coins or credit instruments
used to make exchanges; the personal characteristics of
wheat-traders such as the color of each trader's hair and eyes, his
antecedents and education, the number of members of his family,
their characteristics, antecedents, and education, etc.; the kind of soil
on which the wheat was grown, its physical and chemical
characteristics, the weather prevailing during the growing season; the
personal characteristics of the farmers growing the wheat and of the
consumers who will ultimately use it; and so on indefinitely. Any
attempt to move very far in achieving this kind of "'realism" is certain
to render a theory utterly useless.
Of course, the notion of a completely realistic theory is in part a
straw man. No. critic of a theory would accept this logical extreme
as his objective; he would say that the "assumptions" of the theory
being criticized were "too" unrealistic and that his objective was a set
of assumptions that were "more" realistic though still not completely
and slavishly so. But so long as the test of "realism" is the directly
perceived descriptive accuracy of the "assumptions" - for example,
the observation that "businessmen do not appear to be either as
avaricious or as dynamic or as logical as marginal theory portrays
them,"23
or that "it would be utterly impractical under present
conditions for the manager of a multi-process plant to attempt . . . to
work out and equate marginal costs and marginal revenues for each
productive factor"24
there is no basis for making such a distinction,
that is, for stopping short of the straw man depicted in the preceding
paragraph. What is the criterion by which to judge whether a
particular departure from realism is or is not acceptable? Why is it
more "unrealistic" in analyzing business behavior to neglect the
magnitude of businessmen's costs than the
23. Oliver, op. cit, p. 382.
24. Lester, "Shortcomings of Marginal Analysis for Wage-Employment
Problems," op. cit., P. 75.
33
color of their eyes? The obvious answer is because the first makes
more difference to business behavior than the second; but there is no
way of knowing that this is so simply by observing that businessmen
do have costs of different magnitudes and eyes of different color.
Clearly it can only be known by comparing the effect on the
discrepancy between actual and predicted behavior of taking the one
factor or the other into account. Even the most extreme proponents
of realistic assumptions are thus necessarily driven to reject their
own criterion and to accept the test by prediction when they classify
alternative assumptions as more or less realistic.25
The basic confusion between descriptive accuracy and analytical
relevance that underlies most criticisms of economic theory on the
grounds that its assumptions are unrealistic as well as the
plausibility of the views that lead to this confusion are both
strikingly illustrated by a seemingly innocuous remark in an article
on business-cycle theory that "economic phenomena are varied and
complex, so any comprehensive theory of the business cycle that
can apply closely to reality must be very complicated."26
A
fundamental hypothesis of science is that appearances are deceptive
and that there is a way of looking at or interpreting or, organizing
the evidence that will reveal superficially disconnected and diverse
phenomena to be manifestations of a more fundamental and
relatively simple structure. And the test of this hypothesis, as of any
other, is its fruits - a test that science has
25. E.g., Gordon's direct examination of the "assumptions" leads him to
formulate the alternative hypothesis generally favored by the critics of the
maximization-of-returns hypothesis as follows: "There is an irresistible
tendency to price on the basis of average total costs for some 'normal'
level of output. This is the yardstick, the short-cut, that businessmen and
accountants use, and their aim is more to earn satisfactory profits and
play safe than to maximize profits" (op. cit., p. 275). Yet he essentially
abandons this hypothesis, or converts it into a tautology, and in the
process implicitly accepts the test by prediction when he later remarks:
"Full cost and satisfactory profits may continue to be the objectives even
when total costs are shaded to meet competition or exceeded to take
advantage of a sellers' market" (ibid, p. 284). Where here is the
"irresistible tendency"? What kind of evidence could contradict this
assertion?
26. Sidney S. Alexander, "Issues of Business Cycle Theory Raised by
Mr. Hicks," American Economic Review, XLI (December, 1951), 872.
34
so far met with dramatic success. If a class of "economic phenomena"
appears varied and complex, it is, we must suppose,
because we have no adequate theory to explain them. Known facts
cannot be set on one side; a theory to apply "closely to reality," on
the other. A theory is the way we perceive "facts," and we cannot
perceive "facts" without a theory. Any assertion that economic
phenomena are varied and complex denies the tentative state of
knowledge that alone makes scientific activity meaningful; it is in a
class with John Stuart Mill's justly ridiculed statement that "happily,
there is nothing in the laws of value which remains [1848] for the
present or any future writer to clear up; the theory of the subject is
complete."27
The confusion between descriptive accuracy and analytical
relevance has led not only to criticisms of economic theory on
largely irrelevant grounds but also to misunderstanding of economic
theory and misdirection of efforts to repair supposed defects. "Ideal
types" in the abstract model developed by economic theorists have
been regarded as strictly descriptive categories intended to
correspond directly and fully to entities- in the real world
independently of the purpose for which the model is being used. The
obvious discrepancies have led to necessarily, unsuccesful attempts
to construct theories on the basis of categories intended to be fully
descriptive.
This tendency' is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the interpretation
given to the concepts of "perfect competition" and
"monopoly" and the development of the theory of "monopolistic" or
"imperfect competition." Marshall, it is said, assumed "perfect
competition"; perhaps there once was such a thing. But clearly there
is no longer, and we must therefore discard his theories. The reader
will search long and hard - and I predict unsuccessfully - to find in
Marshall any explicit assumption about perfect competition or any
assertion that in a descriptive sense the world is composed of
atomistic firms engaged in perfect competition. Rather, he will find
Marshall saying: "At one extreme are world markets in which
competition acts directly from all parts of the globe; and at the other
those secluded
27. Principles of Political Economy (Ashley ed.; Longmans, Green &
Co., 1929), p. 436.
35
markets in which all direct competition from afar is shut out, though
indirect and transmitted competition may make itself felt even in
these; and about midway between these extremes lie the great
majority of the markets which the economist and the business man
have to study."28
Marshall took the world as it is; he sought to
construct an "engine" to analyze it, not a photographic reproduction
of it.
In analyzing the world as it is, Marshall constructed the hypothesis
that, for many problems, firms could be grouped into "industries"
such that the similarities among the firms in each group were more
important than the differences among them. These are problems in
which the important element is that a group of firms is affected alike
by some stimulus - a common change in the demand for their
products, say, or in the supply of factors. But this will not do for all
problems: the important element for these ni~ be the differential
effect on particular firms.
The abstract model corresponding to this hypothesis contains two
"ideal" types of firms: atomistically competitive firms, grouped into
industries, and monopolistic firms. A firm is competitive if the
demand curve for its output is infinitely elastic with respect to its
own price for some price and all outputs, given the prices charged by
all other firms; it belongs to an "industry" defined as a group of firms
producing a single "product." A "product" is defined as a collection
of units that are perfect substitutes to purchasers So the elasticity of
demand for the output of one firm with respect to the price of another
firm in the same industry is infinite for some price and some outputs.
A firm is monopolistic if the demand curve for its output is not
infinitely elastic at some price for all outputs.29
If it is a monopolist,
the firm is the industry.30
As always, the hypothesis as a whole consists not only of this
abstract model and its ideal types but also of a set of rules, mostly
28. Principles, p. 329; see also pp. 35, 100, 341, 347, 375, 546.
29. This ideal type can be divided into two types: the oligopolistic firm,
if the demand curve for its output is infinitely elastic at some price for
some but not all outputs; the monopolistic firm proper, if the demand
curve is nowhere infinitely elastic (except possibly at an output of zero).
30. For the oligopolist of the preceding note an industry can be defined
as a group of firms producing the same product.
36
implicit and suggested by example, for identifying actual firms with
one or the other ideal type and for classifying firms into industries.
The ideal types are not intended to be descriptive; they are designed
to isolate the features that are crucial for a particular problem. Even
if we could estimate directly and accurately the demand curve for a
firm's product, we could not proceed immediately to classify the firm
as perfectly competitive or monopolistic according as the elasticity of
the demand curve is or is not infinite. No observed demand curve will
ever be precisely horizontal, so the estimated elasticity will always be
finite. The relevant question always is whether the elasticity is
"sufficiently" large to be regarded as infinite, but this is a question
that cannot be answered, once for all, simply in terms of the
numerical value of the elasticity itself, any more than we can say,
once for all, whether an air pressure of 15 pounds per square inch is
"sufficiently" close to zero to use the formula S = 1/2gt2
Similarly,
we cannot compute cross-elasticities of demand, and then classify
firms into industries according as there is a "substantial gap in the
cross-elasticities of demand." As
Marshall says, "The question where the lines of division between
different commodities [i.e., industries] should be drawn
must be settled by convenience of the particular discussion."31
Everything depends on the problem; there is no inconsistency in
regarding the same firm as if it were a perfect competitor for
one problem, and a monopolist for another, just as there is none
in regarding the same chalk mark as a Euclidean line for one
problem, a Euclidean surface for a second, and a Euclidean
solid for a third. The size of the elasticity and cross-elasticity of
demand, the number of firms producing physically similar products,
etc., are all relevant because they are or may be among the
variables used to define the correspondence between the ideal and
real entities in a particular problem and to specify the circumstances
under which the theory holds sufficiently well; but they
do not provide, once for all, a classification of firms as competitive or
monopolistic.
An example may help to clarify this point. Suppose the problem is
to determine the effect on retail prices of cigarettes of an
31. Principles, p. 100.
37
increase, expected to be permanent, in the federal cigarette tax. I
venture to predict that broadly correct results will be obtained by
treating cigarette firms as if they were producing an identical
product and were in perfect competition. Of course, in such a case,
"some convention must be made as to the" number of Chesterfield
cigarettes "which are taken as equivalent" to a Marlborough.32
On the other hand, the hypothesis that cigarette firms would
behave as if they were perfectly competitive would have been a
false guide to their reactions to price control in World War II, and
this would doubtless have been recognized before the event. Costs
of the cigarette firms must have risen during the war. Under such
circumstances perfect competitors would have reduced the
quantity offered for sale at the previously existing price. But, at
that price, the wartime rise in the income of the public presumably
increased the quantity demanded. Under conditions of perfect
competition strict adherence to the legal price would therefore
imply not only a "shortage" in the sense that quantity demanded
exceeded quantity supplied but also an absolute decline in the
number of cigarettes produced. The facts contradict this particular
implication: there was reasonably good adherence to maximum
cigarette prices, yet the quantities produced increased
substantially. The common force of increased costs presumably
operated less strongly than the disruptive force of the desire by
each firm to keep its share of the market, to maintain the value
and prestige of its brand name, especially when the excess-profits
tax shifted a large share of the costs of this kind of advertising to
the government. For this problem the cigarette firms cannot be
treated as if they were perfect competitors.
Wheat farming is frequently taken to exemplify perfect competition.
Yet, while for some problems it is appropriate to treat
cigarette producers as if they comprised a perfectly competitive
industry, for some it is not appropriate to treat wheat producers as
if they did. For example, it may not be if the problem is the
differential in prices paid by local elevator operators for wheat.
Marshall's apparatus turned out to be most useful for
problems in which a group of firms is affected by common
stimuli,
32. Quoted parts from ibid.
38
and in which the firms can be treated as if they were perfect
competitors. This is the source of the misconception that Marshall
"assumed" perfect competition in some descriptive sense. It would be
highly desirable to have a more general theory than Marshall's, one
that would cover at the same time both those cases in which
differentiation of product or fewness of numbers makes an essential
difference and those in which it does not. Such a theory would enable
us to handle problems we now cannot and, in addition, facilitate
determination of the range of circumstances under which the simpler
theory can be regarded as a good enough approximation. To perform
this function, the more general theory must have content and
substance; it must have implications susceptible to empirical
contradiction and of substantive interest and importance.
The theory of imperfect or monopolistic competition developed by
Chamberlin and Robinson is an attempt to construct such a more
general theory.33
Unfortunately, it possesses none of the attributes
that would make it a truly useful general theory. Its contribution has
been limited largely to improving the exposition of the economics of
the individual firm and thereby the derivation of implications of the
Marshallian model, refining, Marshall's monopoly analysis, and
enriching the vocabulary, available for describing industrial
experience.
The deficiencies of the theory are revealed most clearly in its
treatment of, or inability to treat, problems involving groups of
firms-Marshallian "industries." So long as it is insisted that,
differentiation of product is essential - and it is the distinguishing
feature of the theory that it does insist on this point - the definition of
an industry in terms of firms producing an identical product cannot
be used. By that definition each firm is a separate industry. Definition
in terms of "close" substitutes or a "substantial" gap in
cross-elasticities evades the issue, introduces fuzziness and
undefinable terms into the abstract model where they have no place,
and serves only to make the theory analytically meaningless - "close"
and "substantial" are in the same category
33. E. H. Chamberlin, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition (6tb
e.d.; Cambridge: Harvard University. Press, 1950); Joan Robinson, The
Economics of Imperfect Competition (London: Macmillan & Co., 1933).
39
as a "small" air pressure.34
In one connection Chamberlin implicitly defines an industry as a
group of firms having identical cost and demand curves." But this, too,
is logically meaningless so " long as differentiation of product is, as
claimed, essential and not to be put aside. What does it mean to say
that the cost and demand curves of a firm producing bulldozers are
identical with those of a firm producing hairpins?36
And if it is
meaningless for bulldozers and hairpins, it is meaningless also for two
brands of toothpaste - so long as it is insisted that the difference
between the two brands is fundamentally important.
The theory of monopolistic competition offers no tools for the
analysis of an industry and so no stopping place between the firm at
one extreme and general equilibrium at the other.37
It is therefore
incompetent to contribute to the analysis of a host of important
problems: the one extreme is too narrow to be of great interest; the
other, too broad to permit meaningful generalizations.38
VI. CONCLUSION
Economics as a positive science is a body of tentatively accepted
generalizations about economic phenomena that can be used to
predict the consequences of changes in circumstances.
34. See R. L. Bishop, "Elasticities, Cross-elasticities, and. Market
Relationships," American Economic Review, XLII (December, 1952),
779-803, for a recent attempt to construct a rigorous classification of
market relationships along these lines. Despite its ingenuity and
sophistication, the result seems to me thoroughly unsatisfactory. It rests
basically on certain numbers being 'classified as "large" or "small," yet
there is no discussion at all of how to decide whether a particular number
is "large" or "small," as of course there cannot be on a purely abstract
level.
35. Op. cit., p. 82.
36. There always exists a transformation of quantities that will make
either the cost curves or the demand curves identical; this transformation
need not, however, be linear, in which case it will involve different-sized
units of one product at different levels of output. There does not
necessarily exist a transformation that will make both pairs of curves
identical.
37. See Robert Triffin, Monopolistic Competition and General
Equilibrium Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940), esp.
pp. 188-89.
38. For a detailed critique see George J. Stigler, "Monopolistic
Competition in Retrospect," in Five Lectures on Economic Problems
(London: Macmillan & Co., 1949), pp. 12-24.
40
Progress in expanding this body of generalizations, strengthening
our confidence in their validity, and improving the accuracy of the
predictions they yield is hindered not only by the limitations of
human ability that impede all search for knowledge but also by
obstacles that are especially important for the social sciences in
general and economics in particular, though by no means peculiar to
them. Familiarity with the subject matter of economics breeds
contempt for special knowledge about it. The importance of its
subject matter to everyday life and to major issues of public policy
impedes objectivity and promotes confusion between scientific
analysis and normative judgment. The necessity of relying on
uncontrolled experience rather than on controlled experiment makes
it difficult to produce dramatic and clear-cut evidence to justify the
acceptance of tentative hypotheses. Reliance on uncontrolled
experience does not affect the fundamental methodological principle
that a hypothesis can be tested only by the conformity of its
implications or predictions with observable phenomena; but it does
render the task of testing hypotheses more difficult and gives greater
scope for confusion about the methodological principles involved.
More than other scientists, social scientists need to be self-conscious
about their methodology.
One confusion that has been particularly rife and has done
much damage is confusion about the role of "assumptions" in
economic analysis. A meaningful scientific hypothesis or theory
typically asserts that certain forces are, and other forces are not,
important in understanding a particular class of phenomena.
It is frequently convenient to present such a hypothesis by
stating that the phenomena it is desired to predict behave in
the world of observation as if they occurred in a hypothetical and
highly simplified world containing only the forces that the
hypothesis asserts to be important. In general, there is more
than one way to formulate such a description - more than one
set of "assumptions" in terms of which the theory can be presented.
The choice among such alternative assumptions is made
on the grounds of the resulting economy, clarity, and precision
in presenting the hypothesis; their capacity to bring indirect
evidence to bear on the validity of the hypothesis by suggesting
41
some of its implications that can be readily checked with observation
or by bringing out its connection with other hypotheses dealing with
related phenomena; and similar considerations.
Such a theory cannot be tested by comparing its "assumptions"
directly with "reality,." Indeed, there is no meaningful way in which
this can be done. Complete "realism" is clearly unattainable, and the
question whether a theory is realistic "enough" can be settled only by
seeing whether it yields predictions that are good enough for the
purpose in hand or that are better than predictions from alternative
theories. Yet the belief that a theory can be tested by the realism of
its assumptions independently of the accuracy of its predictions is
widespread and the source of much of the perennial criticism of
economic theory as unrealistic. Such criticism is largely irrelevant,
and, in consequence, most attempts to reform economic theory that it
has stimulated have been unsuccessful.
The irrelevance of so much criticism of economic theory does not
of course imply that existing economic theory deserves any high
degree of confidence. These criticisms may miss the target yet there
may be a target for criticism. In a trivial sense, of course, there
obviously is. Any theory is necessarily provisional and subject to
change with the advance of knowledge. To go beyond this platitude, it
is necessary to be more specific about the content of "existing
economic theory" and to distinguish among its different branches;
some parts of economic theory clearly deserve more confidence than
others. A comprehensive evaluation of the present state of positive
economics, summary of the evidence bearing on its validity, and
assessment of the relative confidence that each part deserves is clearly
a task for a treatise or a set of treatises, if it be possible at all, not for
a brief paper on methodology.
About all that is possible here is the cursory expression of
personal view. Existing relative price theory, which is designed to
explain the allocation of resources among alternative ends and the
division of the product among the co-operating resources, and which
reached almost its present form in Marshall's Principles of
Economics, seems to me both extremely fruitful and deserving of
much confidence for the kind of economic system
42
that characterizes Western nations. Despite the appearance of
considerable controversy, this is true equally of existing static, monetary
theory, which is designed to explain the structural or secular level of
absolute prices, aggregate output, and other variables for the economy
as a whole and which has had a form of the quantity theory of money as
its basic core in all of its major variants from David Hume to the
Cambridge School to Irving Fisher to John Maynard Keynes. The
weakest and least satisfactory part of current economic theory seems to
me to be in the field of monetary dynamics, which is concerned with the
process of adaptation of the economy as a whole to changes in conditions
and so with short-period fluctuations in aggregate activity. In this
field we do not even have a theory that can appropriately be called "the"
existing theory of monetary dynamics.
Of course, even in relative price and static monetary theory there is
enormous room for extending the scope and improving the accuracy of
existing theory. In particular, undue emphasis on the descriptive realism
of "assumptions" has. contributed to neglect of the critical problem of
determining the limits of validity of the various hypotheses that together
constitute the existing economic theory in these areas. The abstract
models corresponding to these hypotheses have been elaborated in considerable
detail and greatly improved in rigor and precision. Descriptive
material on the characteristics of our economic system and its
operations have been amassed on an unprecedented scale, This is all to
the good. But, if we are to use effectively, these abstract models and
this descriptive material, we must have a comparable exploration of the
criteria for determining what abstract model it is best to use for
particular kinds of problems, what entities in the abstract model are to
be identified with what observable entities, and what features of the
problem or of the circumstances have the greatest effect on the accuracy
of the predictions yielded by a particular model or theory.
Progress in positive economics will require not only the testing and
elaboration of existing hypotheses but also the construction of new
hypotheses. On this problem there is little to say on a
43
formal level. The construction of hypotheses is a creative act of
inspiration, intuition, invention; its essence is the vision of something
new in familiar material. The process must be discussed in
psychological, not logical, categories; studied in autobiographies and
biographies, not treatises on scientific method; and promoted by maxim
and example, not syllogism or theorem.