ABSTRACT
Since economics deals with human beings, the problem of its scientific treatment involves fundamental problems of the relations between man and his world. The general theory of economics is therefore simply the rationale of life. A scientific treatment of the problem of prediction and control must assume that this is just as true whether the process is one of conscious or unconscious knowledge, deliberate or automatic response. A scientific world view has no possible place for the intuitive, or any other foresight of new truth, in advance of perception. Science, then, is merely the technique of prediction. The theory of inference requires extension in several ways beyond the simple cases covered by syllogisms made up of universal propositions. The greatest need for the development of economics as a growing body of thought and practice is an adequate appreciation of the meaning, and the limitations, of this body of accurate premises and rigorously established conclusions.
