ABSTRACT
Of course I did not discover reflexivity. Earlier observers recognized it, or at least aspects of it, often under a different name. Knight (1921) explored the difference between risk and uncertainty. Keynes (1936, Chapter 12) compared financial markets to a beauty contest where the participants had to guess who would be the most popular choice. The sociologist Merton (1949) wrote about self-fulfilling prophecies, unintended consequences, and the bandwagon effect. Popper spoke of the ‘Oedipus effect’ in the Poverty of Historicism (1957, Chapter 5).
