The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science. Людвиг фон Мизес

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       THE ULTIMATE FOUNDATION OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE

       An Essay on Method

      Titles in the Liberty Fund Library of the Works of Ludwig von Mises

       Edited by Bettina Bien Greaves

      The Anti-capitalistic Mentality

      Bureaucracy

      Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays

      Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow

      Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

      Interventionism: An Economic Analysis

      Liberalism: The Classical Tradition

      Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics and History of Our Time

      Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War

      On the Manipulation of Money and Credit: Three Treatises on Trade-Cycle Theory

      Planning for Freedom: Let the Market System Work

      A Collection of Essays and Addresses

      Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

      Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution

      The Theory of Money and Credit

      The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method

       Edited by Richard M. Ebeling

      Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises

      Volume 1: Monetary and Economic Policy Problems Before, During, and After the Great War

      Volume 2: Between the Two World Wars: Monetary Disorder, Interventionism, Socialism, and the Great Depression

      Volume 3: The Political Economy of International Reform and Reconstruction

      This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.

      The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as a design element in Liberty Fund books is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

      Editorial additions © 2006 by Liberty Fund, Inc. First published in 1962 by William Volker Fund in association with D. Van Nostrand.

      Front cover photograph of Ludwig von Mises used by permission of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama.

      This eBook edition published in 2012.

      eBook ISBN: E-PUB 978-1-61487-153-8

       www.libertyfund.org

      CONTENTS

Preface to the Second Edition

Some Preliminary Observations Concerning Praxeology Instead of an Introduction

1 The Permanent Substratum of Epistemology

2 On Action

3 On Economics

4 The Starting Point of Praxeological Thinking

5 The Reality of the External World

6 Causality and Teleology

7 The Category of Action

8 The Sciences of Human Action

       CHAPTER 1 The Human Mind

       1 The Logical Structure of the Human Mind

       2 A Hypothesis about the Origin of the A Priori Categories

       3 The A Priori

       4 The A Priori Representation of Reality

       5 Induction

       6 The Paradox of Probability Empiricism

       7 Materialism

       8 The Absurdity of Any Materialistic Philosophy

       CHAPTER 2 The Activistic Basis of Knowledge

       1 Man and Action

       2 Finality

       3 Valuation

       4 The Chimera of Unified Science

       5 The Two Branches of the Sciences of Human Action

       6 The Logical Character of Praxeology

       7 The Logical Character of History

       8 The Thymological Method

       CHAPTER 3 Necessity and Volition

       1 The Infinite

       2 The Ultimate Given

       3 Statistics

       4 Free Will

       5 Inevitability

       CHAPTER 4 Certainty and Uncertainty

       1 The Problem of Quantitative Definiteness

       2 Certain Knowledge

       3 The Uncertainty of the Future

       4 Quantification and Understanding in Acting and in History

       5 The Precariousness of Forecasting in Human Affairs

       6 Economic Prediction and the Trend Doctrine

       7 Decision-Making

       8 Confirmation and Refutability

       9 The Examination of Praxeological Theorems