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• Editorial Staff
• Editorial
• Readers’ Forum: Order Defined In the Process of Its Emergence. a Note Stimulated By Reading Norman Barry, “the Tradition of Spontaneous Order”
• Bibliographical Essay: John Gray, F. A. Hayek and the Rebirth of Classical Liberalism
• Introduction: the Revival of Interest In Hayek—a Unified Research Program In Hayek's Writings?
• The Unity and Coherence of Hayek's Writings: Conception of Mind & Unity of Knowledge
• Overview of Topics Covered In This Essay
• Hayek's General Philosophy—the Kantian Heritage
• Hayek As a Skeptical Kantian
• Three Influences On Hayek's Skeptical Kantianism: Mach, Popper, and Wittgenstein
• 1. Ernst Mach and Metaphysical Neutrality
• 2. Karl Popper: the Growth of Knowledge
• 3. Wittgenstein & Hayek
• Hayek On Knowledge and Mind: Implications For Social Theory
• Hayek's Kantian Philosophy of Mind
• Hayek's Philosophy of Mind & His Social Theory: Beyond Kantianism
• The Idea of a Spontaneous Social Order
• The Application of Spontaneous Order In Economic Life: the Catallaxy
• The Catallactic Order, Practical Knowledge, and the Calculation Debate
• Hayek's Refinements of the Misesian Calculation Debate
• Theory and Method In Economic Science
• Prediction Vs. ‘complex Phenomena’
• Hayek's Opposition to Apriori Science
• Popperian ‘conjectures & Refutations’
• Some Applications of Hayek's Methodological Views: Keynes, Friedman, and Shackle On Economic Policy
• Hayek Contra Constructivism & Social Engineering
• Hayek Contra Keynes
• Hayek Contra Friedman
• Hayek and Shackle
• Hayek's Constitution of Liberty: Ethical Basis of the Juridical Framework of Individual Liberty
• Clarifying Hayek's Moral Theory
• Hume's Influence On Hayek's Social Philosophy
• Hayek's Utilitarianism & Liberty
• Justice, Liberty, and the Rule of Law In Hayek's Constitution of Liberty
• Criticisms of Hayek's Universalizable ‘rule of Law’
• Meeting Objections to the Universalizability Test
• Kantian Universalizability & Liberal Justice
• Some Criticism of Hayek's System of Ideas: Buchanan and Oakeshott
• James Buchanan On Hayek
• Michael Oakeshott On Hayek
• Hayek's Variant of Classical Liberalism: a Fusing of Libertarian & Traditionalistic Ideals?
• Hayek's Voluntaristic Traditionalism: a Market In Traditions
• Conclusion: Hayek's Research Program & Classical Liberalism
• Footnote
• Bibliography of Friedrich A. Hayek
• Books
• Pamphlets
• Books Edited Or Introduced
• Articles In Journals, Newspapers, Or Collections of Essays
• Works About Or Relevant to Friedrich A. Hayek

Hayek's Opposition to Apriori Science

A number of points may be made briefly about Hayek's conception of method in social and economic theory. First, whereas he follows his great teachers in the Austrian tradition in emphasizing the subjective aspects of social phenomena, Hayek's methodology of social and economic science does not belong to that Austrian tradition in which social theory is conceived as an enterprise yielding apodictic truths. Specifically—contrary to T. W. Hutchinson, who periodizes Hayek's work into an Austrian praxeological and a post-Austrian Popperian period, and also contrary to Norman P. Barry who sees both trends running right through Hayek's writings—Hayek never accepted the Misesian conception of a praxeological science of human action which would take as its point of departure a few axioms about the distinctive features of purposeful behavior over time. In the Introduction to Collectivist Economic Planning [E-5, 1935] and elsewhere in his early writings, Hayek had (as Hutchinson notes) insisted that economics yields “‘general laws,’ that is, ‘inherent necessities determined by the permanent nature of the constituent elements.’”55 As Hutchinson himself acknowledges in passing, however, such laws or necessities function in Hayek's writings as postulates (rather than as axioms), and they continue to do so even in his later writings, in which (as I have already noted) a suspicion of the nomothetic paradigm of social science is expressed. It is clear from the context of the quotations cited by Hutchinson that, in speaking of the general laws or inherent necessities of social and economic life, Hayek meant to controvert the excessive voluntarism of historicism, which insinuates that social life contains no unalterable necessities of any sort, rather than to embrace the view that there can be an apriori science of society or human action. To this extent Barry is right in his observation that, “there is a basic continuity in Hayek's writings on methodology.”56 Certainly there seems little substance in a periodization of Hayek's methodological writings by reference to the supposedly Popperian paper of 1937 on “Economics and Knowledge” (A-34).

At the same time, there seems little warrant for Barry's claim that throughout his work Hayek tries “to combine two rather different philosophies of social science; the Austrian praxeological school with its subjectivism and rejection of testability in favour of axiomatic reasoning, and the hypothetico-deductive approach of contemporary science with its emphasis on falsifiability and empirical content.”57 For there is no evidence, so far as I know, that Hayek ever endorsed the Misesian conception of an axiomatic or apriori science of human action grounded in apodictic certainties. Again, as we have seen, Hayek's view that the social sciences are throughout deductive in form antedates Popper's influence and is evidenced in the Introduction to Collectivist Economic Planning [E-5, 1935].

[55.] Quoted by T. W. Hutchinson, The Politics and Philosophy of Economics, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981, p. 214.

[56.] Norman P. Barry, Hayek's Social and Economic Philosophy, London: MacMillan, 1979, p. 41.

[57.] Barry, Hayek, p. 40.