Mises, Ludwig von. Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution

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302 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

of a faulty doctrine may often be merely the outcome

of ignorance or of the fact that it enjoys greater popu-

larity than more correct doctrines.

The main source of dissent among historians is

divergence in regard to the teachings of all the other

branches of knowledge upon which they base their

presentation. To a historian of earlier days who be-

lieved in witchcraft, magic, and the devil's interfer-

ence with human affairs, things had a different aspect

than they have for an agnostic historian. The neo-

mercantilist doctrines of the balance of payments and

of the dollar shortage give an image of present-day

world conditions very different from that provided by

an examination of the situation from the point of view

of modern subjectivist economics.

Chapter 14. The Epistemological

Features of History

Prediction in the Natural Sciences

THE NATURAL SCIENCES have two modes of predict-

ing future events: the sweeping prediction and the

statistical prediction. The former says: b follows a. The

latter says: In x% of all cases b follows a; in (100-x)%

of all cases non-fc follows a.

Neither of these predictions can be called apodictic.

Both are based upon experience. Experience is neces-

sarily of past events. It can be resorted to for the pre-

diction of future events only with the aid of the

assumption that an invariable uniformity prevails in

the concatenation and succession of natural phenom-

ena. Referring to this aprioristic assumption, the natural

sciences proceed to ampliative induction, inferring from

regularity observed in the past to the same regularity in

future events.

Ampliative induction is the epistemological basis of

the natural sciences. The fact that the various machines

and gadgets designed in accordance with the theorems

of the natural sciences run and work in the expected

way provides practical confirmation both of the theo-

rems concerned and of the inductive method. However,

this corroboration too refers only to the past. It does

not preclude the possibility that one day factors up to

303

304 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

now unknown to us may produce effects that will make

a shambles of our knowledge and technological skill.

The philosopher has to admit that there is no way

mortal man can acquire certain knowledge about the

future. But acting man has no reason to attach any im-

portance to the logical and epistemological precarious-

ness of the natural sciences. They provide the only

mental tool that can be used in the ceaseless struggle

for life. They have proved their practical worth. As no

other way to knowledge is open to man, no alternative

is left to him. If he wants to survive and to render his

life more agreeable, he must accept the natural sciences

as guides toward technological and therapeutical suc-

cess.

He must behave as if the predictions of the natural

sciences were truth, perhaps not eternal, unshakable

truth, but at least truth for that period of time for which

human action can plan to provide.

The assurance with which the natural sciences an-

nounce their findings is not founded solely upon this

as if. It is also derived from the intersubjectivity and

objectivity of the experience that is the raw material

of the natural sciences and the starting point of then-

reasoning. The apprehension of external objects is such

that among all those in a position to become aware of

them agreement about the nature of that apprehension

can easily be reached. There is no disagreement about

pointer readings that cannot be brought to a final de-

cision. Scientists may disagree about theories. They

never lastingly disagree about the establishment of

what is called pure facts. There can be no dispute as to

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 305

whether a definite piece of stuff is copper or iron or its

weight is two pounds or five.

It would be preposterous to fail to recognize the

significance of the epistemological discussions concern-

ing induction, truth, and the mathematical calculus of

probability. Yet these philosophical disquisitions do not

further our endeavors to analyze the epistemological

problems of the sciences of human action. What the

epistemology of the sciences of human action has to

remember about the natural sciences is that their theo-

rems,

although abstracted from experience, i.e., from

what happened in the past, have been used successfully

for designing future action.

History and Prediction

In their logical aspect the procedures applied in the

most elaborate investigations in the field of natural

events do not differ from the mundane logic of every-

body's daily business. The logic of science is not differ-

ent from the logic resorted to by any individual in the

meditations that precede his actions or weigh their

effects afterward. There is only one a priori and only

one logic conceivable to the human mind. There is con-

sequently only one body of natural science that can

stand critical examination by the logical analysis of

available experience.

As there is only one mode of logical thinking, there

is only one praxeology (and, for that matter, only one

mathematics) valid for all. As there is no human think-

306 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

ing that would fail to distinguish between A and non-A,

so there is no human action that would not distinguish

between means and ends. This distinction implies that

man values, i.e., that he prefers an A to a B.

For the natural sciences the limit of knowledge is

the establishment of an ultimate given, that is, of a fact

that cannot be traced back to another fact of which it

would appear as the necessary consequence. For the

sciences of human action the ultimate given is the judg-

ments of value of the actors and the ideas that engender

these judgments of value.

It is precisely this fact that precludes employing the

methods of the natural sciences to solve problems of

human action. Observing nature, man discovers an

inexorable regularity in the reaction of objects to stim-

uli. He classifies things according to the pattern of their

reaction. A concrete thing, for example copper, is some-

thing that reacts in the same way in which other speci-

mens of the same class react. As the patterns of this

reaction are known, the engineer knows what future

reaction on the part of copper he has to expect. This

foreknowledge, notwithstanding the epistemological

reservations referred to in the preceding section, is

considered apodictic. All our science and philosophy,

all our civilization would at once be called into ques-

tion if, in but one instance and for but one moment, the

patterns of these reactions varied.

What distinguishes the sciences of human action is

the fact that there is no such foreknowledge of the in-

dividuals' value judgments, of the ends they will aim

at under the impact of these value judgments, of the

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 307

means they will resort to in order to attain the ends

sought and of the effects of their actions insofar as these

are not entirely determined by factors the knowledge of

which is conveyed by the natural sciences. We know

something about these things, but our knowledge of

them and about them is categorially different from the

kind of knowledge the experimental natural sciences

provide about natural events. We could call it histor-

ical knowledge if this term were not liable to misinter-

pretation in suggesting that this knowledge serves only

or predominantly to elucidate past events. Yet its most

important use is to be seen in the service it renders to

the anticipation of future conditions and to the design-

ing of action that necessarily always aims at affecting

future conditions.

Something happens in the field of the nation's domes-

tic politics. How will Senator X, the outstanding man

of the green party, react? Many informed men may

have an opinion about the senator's expected reaction.

Perhaps one of these opinions will prove to be correct.

But it may also happen that none of them was right and

that the senator reacts in a way not prognosticated by

anybody. And then a similar dilemma arises in weigh-

ing the effects brought about by the way the senator

has reacted. This second dilemma cannot be resolved

as the first one was, as soon as the senator's action be-

comes known. For centuries to come historians may dis-

agree about the effects produced by certain actions.

Traditional epistemology, exclusively preoccupied

with the logical problems of the natural sciences and

wholly ignorant even of the existence of the field of

308 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

praxeology, tried to deal with these problems from the

point of view of its narrow-minded, dogmatic ortho-

doxy. It condemned all the sciences that were not ex-

perimental natural sciences as backward and committed

to an outdated philosophical and metaphysical, i.e., in

their usage, stupid, method. It confused probability as

the term is used in colloquial expressions referring to

history and practical everyday action with the concept

of probability as employed in the mathematical calculus

of probability. Finally sociology made its appearance.

It promised to substitute true science for the rubbish

and empty gossiping of the historians in developing an

aposteriori science of "social laws" to be derived from

historical experience.

This disparagement of the methods of history moved

first Dilthey, then Windelband, Rickert, Max Weber,

Croce, and Collingwood to opposition. Their interpre-

tations were in many regards unsatisfactory. They were

deluded by many of the fundamental errors of histori-

cism. All but Collingwood failed entirely to recognize

the unique epistemological character of economics.

They were vague in their references to psychology. The

first four moreover were not free from the chauvinistic

bias which in the age of pan-Germanism induced even

the most eminent German thinkers to belittle the teach-

ings of what they called Western philosophy. But the

fact remains that they succeeded brilliantly in elucidat-

ing the epistemological features of the study of history.

They destroyed forever the prestige of those epistemo-

logical doctrines that blamed history for being history

and for not being "social physics." They exposed the fu-

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 309

tility of the search after aposteriori laws of historical

change or historical becoming that would make possible

the prediction of future history in the way the physicists

predict the future behavior of copper. They made his-

tory self-conscious.

The Specific Understanding of History

Praxeology, the a priori science of human action,

and, more specifically, its up to now best-developed

part, economics, provides in its field a consummate in-

terpretation of past events recorded and a consummate

anticipation of the effects to be expected from future

actions of a definite kind. Neither this interpretation

nor this anticipation tells anything about the actual

content and quality of the acting individuals* judgments

of value. Both presuppose that the individuals are valu-

ing and acting, but their theorems are independent of

and unaffected by the particular characteristics of this

valuing and acting. These characteristics are for the

sciences of human action ultimate data, they are what

is called historical individuality.

However, there is a momentous difference between

the ultimate given in the natural sciences and that in

the field of human action. An ultimate given of nature

is—f or the time being, that

is,

until someone succeeds in

exposing it as the necessary consequence of some other

ultimate given—a stopping point for human reflection.

It is as it is, that is all that man can say about it.

But it is different with the ultimate given of human

action, with the value judgments of individuals and the

310 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

actions induced by them. They are ultimately given as

they cannot be traced back to something of which they

would appear to be the necessary consequence. If this

were not the case, it would not be permissible to call

them an ultimate given. But they are not, like the ulti-

mate given in the natural sciences, a stopping point for

human reflection. They are the starting point of a spe-

cific mode of reflection, of the specific understanding of

the historical sciences of human action.

If the experimenter in the laboratory has established

a fact which, at least for the time being, cannot be

traced back to another fact of which it would appear as

a derivative, there is nothing more to be said about the

issue. But if we are faced with a value judgment and

the resulting action, we may try to understand how

they originated in the mind of the actor.

This specific understanding of human action as it

is practiced by everybody in all his interhuman rela-

tions and actions is a mental procedure that must not

be confused with any of the logical schemes resorted

to by the natural sciences and by everybody in purely

technological or therapeutical activities.

The specific understanding aims at the cognition of

other people's actions. It asks in retrospect: What was

he doing, what was he aiming at? What did he mean in

choosing this definite end? What was the outcome of his

action? Or it asks analogous questions for the future:

What ends will he choose? What will he do in order to

attain them? What will the outcome of his action be?

In actual life all these questions are seldom asked in

isolation. They are mostly connected with other ques-

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 311

tions referring to praxeology or to the natural sciences.

The categorial distinctions that epistemology is bound

to make are tools of our mental operations. The real

events are complex phenomena and can be grasped

by the mind only if each of the various tools available

is employed for its proper purpose.

The main epistemological problem of the specific

understanding is: How can a man have any knowledge

of the future value judgments and actions of other peo-

ple? The traditional method of dealing with this prob-

lem, commonly called the problem of the alter ego or

Fremdverstehen, is unsatisfactory. It focused attention

upon grasping the meaning of other people's behavior

in the "present" or, more correctly, in the past. But the

task with which acting man, that is, everybody, is faced

in all relations with his fellows does not refer to the

past; it refers to the future. To know the future reac-

tions of other people is the first task of acting man.

Knowledge of their past value judgments and actions,

although indispensable, is only a means to this end.

It is obvious that this knowledge which provides a

man with the ability to anticipate to some degree other

people's future attitudes is not a priori knowledge. The

a priori discipline of human action, praxeology, does

not deal with the actual content of value judgments;

it deals only with the fact that men value and then act

according to their valuations. What we know about

the actual content of judgments of value can be derived

only from experience. We have experience of other

people's past value judgments and actions; and we have

experience of our own value judgments and actions.