ABSTRACT
Methodologists in the Senior/Cairnes tradition argue that economics is a "science". Frank Hyneman Knight was reared in the same rigid, narrow-minded, dogmatic environment as the institutionalists, an environment in which the common prejudices of the community were elevated to the status of premises for academic philosophizing, and the foundations of economic thought were said to be on a par with the teachings of Christianity. The benefits that Knight could show from putting economics into the assumer family were impressive, among them the fact that he unselfconsciously could appeal to premises and argue about them in a most persuasive fashion. The vision that seems common to both men needs more careful formulation by its adherents and more serious scrutiny by its critics. The vision was accepted too uncritically at one time and tends to be rejected too cavalierly today.
