The Dismal Mind - Economics as a Pretension to Science - Part I
"It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not
refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as well as
in the end his response is aiming at." Ludwig von Mises
I. Introduction
Storytelling has been with us since the days of campfire and
besieging wild animals. It served a number of important
functions: amelioration of fears, communication of vital
information (regarding survival tactics and the characteristics
of animals, for instance), the satisfaction of a sense of order
(predictability and justice), the development of the ability to
hypothesize, predict and introduce theories and so on.
We are all endowed with a sense of wonder. The world around us
in inexplicable, baffling in its diversity and myriad forms. We
experience an urge to organize it, to "explain the wonder away",
to order it so that we know what to expect next (predict). These
are the essentials of survival. But while we have been
successful at imposing our mind on the outside world