Teoria econômica e história empírica

Nonpraxeological Schools of Thought

by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Nonpraxeological schools of thought mistakenly believe that relationships between certain events are well-established empirical laws when they are really necessary and logical praxeological ones. And they thereby behave as if the statement "a ball cannot be red and nonred all over at the same time" requires testing in Europe, America, Africa, Asia, and Australia (of course requiring a lot of funds in order to pay for such daring nonsensical research). Moreover, the nonpraxeologists also believe that relationships between certain events are well-established empirical laws (with predictive implications) when a priori reasoning can show them to be no more than information regarding contingent historical connections between events, which does not provide us with any knowledge whatsoever regarding the future course of events.
This illustrates another fundamental confusion non-Austrian schools have: a confusion over the categorical difference between theory and history and the implication that this difference has for the problem of social and economic forecasting.
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