Archive for 18 April 2007
Unintended Consequences and the Social Sciences
| Nicolai Foss |
According to a prominent tradition in economics and classical liberal thought, the social sciences (particularly economics) are primarily concerned with explaining unintended phenomena, whether more temporary outcomes, such as market phenomena, or more permanent ones, such as institutions, in terms of the intentional actions of multiple interacting agents. In contrast, the social sciences are not really taken up with explaining individual action per se.
This is an understanding, or perhaps even doctrine, that is perhaps most famously associated with Hayek, but it has also been echoed by Ludwig Lachmann (among Hayek’s contemporaries) and by many modern Austrians, as well as by philosophers, notably Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Edna Ullman-Margalitt, and (non-Austrian) economists such as Andrew Schotter (in his 1981 book on institutions). (Of course, the notion of unintended consequences itself is by no means unique to classical liberal economists but can be found in the thought of most major thinkers on social science and political philosophy).
However, there are several problems with the doctrine that the social sciences are mainly about unintended consequences. Here are two that seem to have not been previously noticed: (more…)
Organizations and Markets 
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