The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock
• Introduction
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• The Organization of Inquiry
• Chapter I: The Social Organization of Science
• Chapter II: Why Inquire?
• Chapter III: The Subject and Methods of Inquiry
• Chapter IV: Data Collection
• Chapter V: The Problem of Induction
• Chapter VI: Verification and Dissemination
• Chapter VII: The Backwardness of the Social Sciences
• Chapter VIII: Practical Suggestions

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The genesis of this book was a period of about six months spent working with Karl Popper. At the time I had no intention of writing a book on science, and my studies were devoted to an entirely different problem;1 nevertheless, Popper’s approach necessarily rubbed off on me, and I became interested in the problems of science. Since I felt that I had little chance of making any significant addition to Popper’s work on the philosophy of science, my inquiries were directed toward the problem of science as a social system. Philosophically, my debt to Dr. Popper is so heavy that I decided to acknowledge the debt here, instead of attempting to footnote his work in every case where it was relevant.

I have never met Michael Polanyi, but the reader will, no doubt, notice his influence also. Here, again, I have decided to omit most footnotes in the text and to handle the matter here. Although the main focus of Dr. Polanyi’s work2 is different from mine, there is clearly a close relationship.

I owe a further, rather diffuse, debt to the large number of scholars who in recent years have produced so much research on science. Most of this work, however, has added to my general knowledge, but not directly helped me in my work. I have, for example, read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions3 with profit and pleasure, but it will not be further mentioned in this book. This is not because I regard it as unimportant but because it deals with different problems. In this it is typical. Most of the recent work has been done by people whose basic orientation is sociological, while mine is economic. There is no necessary conflict between sociologists and economists, but they do ask rather different questions. The work, particularly the empirical work, by the sociologists has enlightened and informed me, but it is generally not directly relevant to the problems investigated in this book.

Although the study of the history of science is not new,4 its present development is so much greater than at any previous period that it can almost be regarded as an invention of our present generation. This fact has both helped me and raised a minor but difficult problem. I have used numerous examples drawn from the history of science to illustrate theoretical points. The problem of whether I should footnote them all, thus insulting those of my readers who know their history, or whether I should assume that anyone who reads a book on the organization of science will need no authority for statements such as that Einstein was unable to get an academic job when he graduated was difficult. I have ended up with a compromise which will probably satisfy no one.

My colleague, Dr. James Buchanan, has assisted my work in many ways. In addition to many direct suggestions and comments, I have profited from his general methodological approach. His insistence on both imagination and rigor in the construction of theories has been an invaluable stimulus. One of the anonymous readers of the Duke University Press also must receive a good deal of credit for the final version. He (or she) made almost sixty specific suggestions for changes, of which I accepted over fifty, with a resulting major improvement in both the style and matter.

Last, having distributed credit where it is due, I must allocate some blame. The Duke University Press is solely responsible for any errors in spelling, punctuation, etc., which may occur in the book. I have never been any use at all as a proofreader, and the Press should have taken this fact into account in preparing the book for publication.

[1. ]The eventual outcome of my work was The Politics of Bureaucracy (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1965).

[2. ]In addition to Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), Polanyi has written numerous articles on science. His Logic of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951) contains much of interest to the student of science.

[3. ]By Thomas S. Kuhn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

[4. ]Adam Smith himself wrote a “History of Astronomy” in his youth. See Nathan Rosenberg, “Adam Smith on the Division of Labour: Two Views or One?” Economica (May, 1965), 127–39.