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揺らぐ１９５３年体制、朝鮮半島発の激震に備えを

 

흔들리는 1953년체제, 한반도에서 강진 대비를

 

[요미우리] 2018년 10월 31일 16시 00 분

 

북한의 핵 문제를 둘러싼 북미, 남북의 술책이 활발 해지고 있다. 이 문제가 정착 할 때, 동아시아는 크게 모습을 바꾸고 있는 것이다.

 

 

１９５３年の朝鮮戦争休戦協定以来、６５年間続いてきた秩序は、「終わりの始まり」の時代を迎えた.

 

1953년 한국 전쟁 휴전협정 이후 65년간 계속되어 온 질서는 '종말 시작' 시대를 맞이했다.

 

 

 

새로운 시대에 일본은 어떻게 대비해야 하는가? 캐논 글로벌 전략 연구소 미야케 쿠니히코 연구 주간에 들었다 (청자 · 요미우리 신문 미디어 국 편집부 차장 다구치 에이치).

 

 

북한의 핵 문제를 계기로 한반도 정세에 큰 변화가 태어나려고하고 있습니다. 미야케 씨는 지금의 상황을 "53년 체제의 종말의 시작"이라고 부릅니다. 이것은 무슨 뜻입니까?

 

 

 

"제 2차 세계 대전이 끝난 45년에 큰 패러다임의 변화(틀의 변화)가 발생했습니다. 블록경제 민족주의 포퓰리즘이 창궐한 시대에서 글로벌 열린경제 시스템, 그리고 자유민주 등의 보편적 가치를 기초로 하는 새로운 국제 체제로 전환 된 것입니다.

 

 

 

이를 주도한 것은 미국이지만, 당연히, 반응이 있었습니다. 그것은 냉전입니다. 냉전이 전 세계로 퍼지며 동아시아 판은 50년 시작된 한국 전쟁이었습니다. 53년 휴전 협정이 맺어진 년도, 그 이후 동아시아에서 큰 전쟁은 없습니다.

 

 

휴전 협정은 확실히 전쟁 잔재 참사는 있지만, 그것이 지역에 가져온 안정은 매우 효과적이었습니다. 일본의 전후 부흥도 한국의" 한강의 기적 "(60 년대 이후 경제성장)도이 덕분이다. 중국의 개혁 · 개방도 한반도에 불씨가 남아 있다면, 지금의 성과는 줄 수 없었던 것이라고 생각합니다.

 

 

朝鮮半島において、次の状況に向かう動きが活発化しています。

 

한반도에서 다음과 같은 상황으로 움직임이 활발해지고 있습니다.

 

 

韓国で保守が弱体化したスキをついて、今の（北に接近するという）状況が生まれています。

 

한국에서 보수가 약화된 빈틈으로 지금 (북쪽으로 접근하는) 상황이 발생하고 있습니다.

 

 

미국의 트럼프 대통령은 6월 12일 북 - 미 정상 회담에서 김정은에 불필요할 정도로 국제적 인지도를 주었습니다. 결과적으로 53년 체제의 극복 내지 붕괴를 향한 속도를 단번에 앞당겨 버렸습니다."

 

[출처] [외신] 한국 종말이 시작되고 있다

 

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한국의 유력 언론은 문죄인을 김정은의 대변인이라 불렀고, 미국의 평론가는 팝송의 가사를 가져와 그를 "떠오르는 불길한 달"이라고 불렀다. 

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사회주의란 사회학에서 고급 학위를 지닌 사람들에 의해 결정이 내려지는 정치 체제이다.
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사기꾼에 대한 가장 분명한 정의
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Hayek on Kinds of Order in Society

 

 

 

Kinds of Order in Society

 

F. A. HAYEK*

 

 

WE CALL A MULTITUDE of men a society when their activities are mutually adjusted to one another. Men in society can successfully pursue their ends because they know what to expect from their fellows. Their relations, in other words, show a certain order. How such an order of the multifarious activities of millions of men is produced or can be achieved is the central problem of social theory and social policy.1

 

 

Sometimes the very existence of such an order is denied when it is asserted that society—or, more particularly, its economic activities—are “chaotic.” A complete absence of an order, however, cannot be seriously maintained. What presumably is meant by that complaint is that society is not as orderly as it should be. The orderliness of existing society may indeed be capable of great improvement; but the criticism is due mainly to the circumstance that both the order which exists and the manner in which it is formed are not readily perceived. The plain man will be aware of an order of social affairs only to the extent that such an order has been deliberately arranged; and he is inclined to blame the apparent absence of an order in much of what he sees on the fact that nobody has deliberately ordered those activities. Order, to the ordinary person, is the result of the ordering activity of an ordering mind. Much of the order of society of which we speak is, however, not of this kind; and the very recognition that there exists such an order requires a certain amount of reflection.

 

 

The chief difficulty is that the order of social events can generally not be perceived by our senses but can only be traced by our intellect. It is, as we shall say, an abstract and not a concrete order. It is also a very complex order. And it is an order which, though it is the result of human action, has not been created by men deliberately arranging the elements in a preconceived pattern. These peculiarities of the social order are closely connected, and it will be the task of this essay to make their interrelation clear. We shall see that, although there is no absolute necessity that a complex order must always be spontaneous and abstract, the more complex the order is at which we aim, the more we shall have to rely on spontaneous forces to bring it about, and the more our power of control will be confined in consequence to the abstract features and not extend to the concrete manifestations of that order.2

 

 

(The terms “concrete” and “abstract,” which we shall have to use frequently, are often used in a variety of meanings. It may be useful, therefore, to state here in which sense they will be used. As “concrete” we shall describe particular real objects given to observation by our senses, and regard as the distinguishing characteristic of such concrete objects that there are always still more properties of them to be discovered than we already know or have perceived. In comparison with any such determinate object, and the intuitive knowledge we can acquire of it, all images and concepts of it are abstract and possess a limited number of attributes. All thought is in this sense necessarily abstract, although there are degrees of abstractness and it is customary to describe the relatively less abstract in contrast to the more abstract as (relatively) concrete. Strictly speaking, however, the contrast between the concrete and the abstract, as we shall use it, is the same as that between a fact of which we always know only abstract attributes but can always discover still more such attributes, and all those images, conceptions, and concepts which we retain when we no longer contemplate the particular object.3

 

 

The distinction between an abstract and a (relatively) concrete order is, of course, the same as that between a concept with a small connotation (intention) and a consequently wide denotation on the one hand, and a concept with a rich connotation and a correspondingly narrow denotation on the other. An abstract order of a certain kind may comprise many different manifestations of that order. The distinction becomes particularly important in the case of complex orders based on a hierarchy of ordering relations where several such orders may agree with respect to their more general ordering principles but differ in others. What is significant in the present context is that it may be important that an order possesses certain abstract features irrespective of its concrete manifestations, and that we may have it in our power to bring it about that an order which spontaneously forms itself will have those desirable characteristics, but not to determine the concrete manifestations or the position of the individual elements.)

 

 

THE SIMPLE CONCEPTION of an order of the kind which results when somebody puts the parts of an intended whole in their appropriate places applies in many parts of society. Such an order which is achieved by arranging the relations between the parts according to a preconceived plan we call in the social field an organization. The extent to which the power of many men can be increased by such deliberate co-ordination of their efforts is well-known and many of the achievements of man rest on the use of this technique. It is an order which we all understand because we know how it is made. But it is not the only nor even the chief kind of order on which the working of society rests; nor can the whole of the order of society be produced in this manner.

 

 

The discovery that there exist in society orders of another kind which have not been designed by men but have resulted from the action of individuals without their intending to create such an order, is the achievement of social theory—or, rather, it was this discovery which has shown that there was an object for social theory. It shook the deeply-ingrained belief of men that where there was an order there must also have been a personal orderer. It had consequences far beyond the field of social theory since it provided the conceptions which made possible a theoretical explanation of the structures of biological phenomena.4 And in the social field it provided the foundation for a systematic argument for individual liberty.

 

 

This kind of order which is characteristic not only of biological organisms (to which the originally much wider meaning of the term organism is now usually confined), is an order which is not made by anybody but which forms itself.

 

 

It is for this reason usually called a “spontaneous” or sometimes (for reasons we shall yet explain) a “polycentric” order. If we understand the forces which determine such an order, we can use them by creating the conditions under which such an order will form itself.

 

 

This indirect method of bringing about an order has the advantage that it can be used to produce orders which are far more complex than any order we can produce by putting the individual pieces in their appropriate places. But it has the drawback that it enables us to determine only the general character of the resulting order and not its detail. Its use in one sense thus extends our powers: it places us in a position to produce very complex orders which we could never produce by putting the individual elements in their places. Our power over the particular arrangement of the elements in such an order is however much more limited than it is over an order which we produce by individually arranging the parts. All we can control are certain abstract features of such an order, but not its concrete detail.

 

 

All this is familiar in the physical and biological field. We could never produce a crystal by directly placing the individual molecules from which it is built up. But we can create the conditions under which such a crystal will form itself. If for that purpose we make use of known forces, we can, however, not determine the position an individual molecule will occupy within a crystal, or even the size or position of the several crystals. Similarly, we can create the conditions under which a biological organism will grow and develop. But all we can do is create conditions favorable to that growth, and we are able to determine the resulting shape and structure only within narrow limits. The same applies to spontaneous social orders.

 

 

IN THE CASE OF certain social phenomena, such as language, the fact that they possess an order which nobody has deliberately designed and which we have to discover, is now generally recognized. In these fields we have at last outgrown the naive belief that every orderly arrangement of parts which assist man in the pursuit of his ends must be due to a personal maker. There was a time when it was believed that all those useful institutions which serve the intercourse of men, such as language, morals, law, writing, or money, must be due to an individual inventor or legislator, or to an explicit agreement of wise men who consented to certain useful practices.5 We understand now the process by which such institutions have gradually taken shape through men learning to act according to certain rules—rules which they long knew how to follow before there was any need to state them in words.

 

 

But if in those simpler instances we have overcome the belief that, wherever we find an order or a regular structure which serves a human purpose, there must also have been a mind which deliberately created it, the reluctance to recognize the existence of such spontaneous orders is still with us in many other fields. We still cling to a division, deeply embedded in Western thought since the classical antiquity, between things which owe their order to “nature” and those which owe it to “convention.”6 It still seems strange and unbelievable to many people that an order may arise neither wholly independent of human action, nor as the intended result of such action, but as the unforeseen effect of conduct which men have adopted with no such end in mind. Yet much of what we call culture is just such a spontaneously grown order which arose neither altogether independently of human action nor by design, but by a process which stands somewhere between these two possibilities which were long considered as exclusive alternatives.

 

 

Such spontaneous orders we find not only in the working of institutions like language or law (or, more conspicuously, the biological organisms) which show a recognizable permanent structure that is the result of slow evolution, but also in the relations of the market which must continuously form and reform themselves and where only the conditions conducive to their constant reconstitution have been shaped by evolution. The genetic and the functional aspects can never be fully separated.7

 

 

That division of labor on which our economic system rests is the best example of such a daily renewed order. In the order created by the market, the participants are constantly induced to respond to events of which they do not directly know, in a way which secures a continuous flow of production, a coordination of the quantities of the different things so that the even flow is not interrupted and everything is produced at least as cheaply as anybody can still provide the last quantities for which others are prepared to pay the costs. That it is an order which consists of the adaptation to the multitudinous circumstances which no single person can know completely is one reason why its existence is not perceived by simple inspection. It is embodied in such relations as those between prices and costs of commodities and the corresponding distribution of resources; and we can confirm that such an order in fact exists only after we have reconstructed its principles in our minds.

 

 

THE “ORDERING FORCES” of which we can make use in such instances are the rules governing the behavior of the elements of which the orders are formed. They determine that each element will respond to the particular circumstances which act on it in a manner which will result in an overall pattern. Each of the iron filings, for instance, which are magnetized by a magnet under the sheet of paper on which we have poured them, will so act on and react to all the others that they will arrange themselves in a characteristic figure of which we can predict the general shape but not the detail. In this simple instance the elements are all of the same kind and the known uniform rules which determine their behavior would enable us to predict the behavior of each in great detail if we only knew all the facts and were able to deal with them in all their complexity.

 

 

Some order of a determinate general character may form itself also from various kinds of different elements, i.e., of elements whose response to given circumstances will be alike only in some but not in all respects. The formation of the molecules of highly complex organic compounds provides an example from the physical sciences. But the fact is especially significant for many of the spontaneous orders which form themselves in the biological and social sphere. They are composed of many different elements which will respond to the same circumstances alike in some respects but not in others. But they will form orderly wholes, because each element responds to its particular environment in accordance with definite rules. The order results thus from the separate responses of the different elements to the particular circumstances which act on them and for this reason we describe it as a “polycentric order.”8

 

 

The physical examples of spontaneous orders we have considered are instructive because they show that the rules which the elements follow need of course not be “known” to them. The same is true more often than not where living beings and particularly men are the elements of such an order. Man does not know most of the rules on which he acts;9 and even what we call his intelligence is largely a system of rules which operate on him but which he does not know. In animal societies and in a great measure in primitive human society, the structure of social life is determined by rules of action which manifest themselves only in their being obeyed. It is only when individual intellects begin to differ sufficiently (or individual minds become more complex) that it becomes necessary to express the rules in communicable form so that they can be taught by example and deviant behavior can be corrected and differences of view expressed about what is to be decided.10 Though man never existed without laws which he obeyed, he did exist for millennia without laws which he knew in the sense that he was able to articulate them.

 

 

Where the elements of the social order are individual men, the particular circumstances to which each of them reacts are those which are known to him. But it is only when the responses of the individuals show a certain similarity, or obey some common rules that this will result in an overall order. Even a limited similarity of their responses—common rules which determine only some aspects of their behavior—suffice, however, for the formation of an order of a general kind. The important fact is that this order will be an adaptation to a multitude of circumstances which are known only to the individual members but not as a totality to any one of them; and that such an order will result only because, and in so far as, the different individuals follow similar rules in these responses to the particular circumstances known to them. This does not mean, nor is it necessary for the production of an order, that in similar circumstances different persons will do precisely the same thing. All that is meant and required is that in some respect they follow the same rule, that their responses are similar in some degree, or that they are limited to a certain range of actions which all have some attributes in common. This is true even of the iron filings in our former illustration which may not all move with the same speed because they will be different in shape, smoothness, or weight. Such differences will determine the particular manifestation of the resulting pattern which, in consequence of our ignorance of these particulars, will be unpredictable; but the general character of the pattern will be unaffected by them and will therefore be predictable.

 

 

Similarly, the responses of the human individuals to events in their environment need be similar only in certain abstract aspects in order that a definite overall pattern should result. There must be some regularity but not complete regularity in their actions: they must follow some common rules, but these common rules need not be sufficient to determine their action fully; and what action a particular individual will take will depend on further characteristics peculiar to him.

 

 

The question which is of central importance both for social theory and social policy is what rules the individuals must follow so that an order will result. Some such common rules the individuals will follow merely because of the similarity of their environment, or, rather, because of the similar manner in which this environment reflects itself in their minds. Others they will all follow spontaneously because they are part of the common cultural tradition of their society. But there are still others which it is necessary that they be made to obey, since it would be in the interest of each individual to disregard them, though the overall order will be formed only if the rule is generally obeyed.

 

 

The chief regularity in the conduct of individuals in a society based on division of labor and exchange follows from their common situation: they all work to earn an income. This means that they will normally prefer a larger income for a given effort—and possibly increase their effort if its productivity increases. This is a rule which is sufficiently generally followed in fact for those who follow it to impress upon society an order of a certain kind. But the fact that most people follow this rule in their actions leaves the character of the resulting order yet very indeterminate, and it certainly does not by itself insure that this order will be of a beneficent character. For this it is necessary that people also obey certain conventional rules, i.e., rules which do not follow simply from the nature of their knowledge and aims but which have become habitual in their society. The common rules of morals and of law are the chief instance of this.

 

 

It is not our task here to analyze the relation between the different kinds of rules which people in fact follow and the order which results from this. We are interested only in one particular class of rules which contribute to the nature of the order and which, because we can deliberately shape them, are the chief tool through which we can influence the general character of the order which will form itself: the rules of law.

 

 

These rules differ from the others which individuals follow chiefly by the circumstances that people are made to obey them by their fellows. They are necessary because only if the individuals know what means are at their respective disposals, and are made to bear the consequences of their use of these means, will the resulting order possess certain desirable attributes. The appropriate delimitation of these individual spheres is the main function of the rules of law, and their desirable content one of the chief problems of social policy. This is not altered by the fact that their desirable form has been found largely by the accumulated experience of ages and that their further improvement is also to be expected more from slow experimental piecemeal evolution than from redesign of the whole.

 

 

THOUGH THE CONDUCT of the individuals which produces the social order is guided in part by deliberately enforced rules, the order is still a spontaneous order, corresponding to an organism rather than to an organization. It does not rest on the activities being fitted together according to a preconceived plan, but on their being adjusted to each other through the confinement of the action of each by certain general rules. And the enforcement of these general rules insures only the general character of the order and not its concrete realization. It also provides only general facilities which unknown individuals may use for their own ends, but does not insure the achievement of any particular results.

 

 

In order to enforce the rules required for the formation of this spontaneous order, an order of the other kind, an organization, is also required. Even if the rules themselves were given once and for all, their enforcement would demand the coordinated effort of many men. The task of changing and improving the rules may also, though it need not, be the object of organized effort. And in so far as the state, in addition to upholding the law, renders other services to the citizens, this also requires an organized apparatus.

 

 

The organization of the apparatus of government is also effected in some measure by means of rules. But these rules which serve the creation and direction of an organization are of a different character from those which make possible the formation of a spontaneous order. They are rules which apply only to particular people selected by government; and they have to be followed by them in most instances (i.e., except in the case of judges) in the pursuit of particular ends also determined by government.

 

 

Even where the type of order chosen is that of organization and not a spontaneous order, the organizer must largely rely on rules rather than specific commands to the members of the organization. This is due to the fundamental problem which all complex order encounters: the organizer wants the individuals who are to cooperate to make use of knowledge which he himself does not possess. In none but the most simple kinds of social order it is conceivable that all activities are governed by a single mind. And certainly nobody has yet succeeded in deliberately arranging all the activities of a complex society; there is no such thing as a fully planned society of any degree of complexity. If anyone did succeed in organizing such a society, it would not make use of many minds but would instead be altogether dependent on one mind; it would certainly not be complex but very primitive—and so would soon be the mind whose knowledge and will determined everything. The facts which enter into the design of such an order could be only those which could be perceived and digested by this mind; and as only he could decide on action and thus gain experience, there could not be that interplay of many minds in which a lone mind can grow.

 

 

The kind of rules which govern an organization are rules for the performance of assigned tasks. They presuppose that the place of each individual in a fixed skeleton order is decided by deliberate appointment, and that the rules which apply to him depend on the place he has been given in that order. The rules thus regulate only the detail of the action of appointed functionaries or agencies of government—or the functioning of an organization created by arrangement.

 

 

Rules which are to enable individuals to find their own places in a spontaneous order of the whole society must be general; they must not assign to particular individuals a status, but rather leave the individual to create his own position. The rules which assist in the running of an organization, on the other hand, operate only within a framework of specific commands which designate the particular ends which the organization aims at and the particular functions which the several members are to perform. Though applicable only to particular, individually designated people, these rules of an organization look very much like the general rules underlying a spontaneous order, but they must not be confused with the latter. They enable those who have to carry out commands to fill in detail according to circumstances which they, but not the author of the command, know.

 

 

In the terms we have used, this means that the general rules of law aim at an abstract order whose concrete or particular manifestation is unpredictable; while both the commands and the rules which enable those who obey commands to fill in the detail left open by the command, serve a concrete order or an organization. The more complex the order aimed at, the greater will be the part of the circumstances determining its concrete manifestation which cannot be known to those whose concern it is to secure the formation of the order, and the more they will be able to control it only through rules and not through commands. In the most complex type of organizations little more than the assignment of particular functions to particular people will be determined by specific decisions, while the performance of these functions will be regulated only by rules. It is when we pass from the biggest organization, serving particular tasks, to the order of the whole of society which comprises the relations between those organizations as well as the relations between them and the individuals and among the individuals, that this overall order relies entirely on rules, i.e., is entirely of a spontaneous character, with not even its skeleton determined by commands. The situation is, of course, that, because it was not dependent on organization but grew as a spontaneous order, the structure of modern society has attained a degree of complexity which far exceeds that which it is possible to achieve by deliberate organization. Even the rules which made the growth of this complex order possible were not designed in anticipation of that result; but those peoples who happened to adopt suitable rules developed a complex civilization which prevailed over others. It is thus a paradox, based on a complete misunderstanding of these connections, when it is sometimes contended that we must deliberately plan modern society because it has grown so complex. The fact is rather that we can preserve an order of such complexity only if we control it not by the method of “planning,” i.e., by direct orders, but on the contrary aim at the formation of a spontaneous order based on general rules.

 

 

We shall presently have to consider how in such a complex system the different principles of order must be combined. At this stage it is necessary, however, at once to forestall a misunderstanding and to stress that there is one way in which it can never be sensible to mix the two principles. While in an organization it makes sense, and indeed will be the rule, to determine the skeleton by specific command and regulate the detail of the action of the different members only by rules, the reverse could never serve a rational purpose; if the overall character of an order is of the spontaneous kind, we cannot improve upon it by issuing to the elements of that order direct commands: because only these individuals and no central authority will know the circumstances which make them do what they do.

 

 

EVERY SOCIETY of any degree of complexity must make use of both ordering principles which we have discussed. But while they must be combined by being applied to different tasks and to the sectors of society corresponding to them, they cannot successfully be mixed in any manner we like. Lack of understanding of the difference between the two principles constantly leads to such confusion. It is the manner in which the two principles are combined which determines the character of the different social and economic systems. (The fact that these different “systems” which result from different combinations of the two ordering principles, are sometimes also referred to as different “orders” has added to the terminological confusion.)

 

 

We shall consider further only a free system which relies on spontaneous ordering forces not merely (as every system must) to fill in the interstices left by the commands determining its aim and structure, but also for its overall order. Such systems not only have many organizations (in particular, firms) as their elements but also require an organization to enforce obedience to (and modify and develop) the body of abstract rules which are required to secure the formation of the spontaneous overall order. The fact that government is itself an organization and employs rules as an instrument of its organization, and that beyond its task of enforcing the law this organization renders a multitude of other services, has led to a complete confusion between the nature of the different kinds of rules and the orders which they serve.

 

 

The abstract and general rules of law in the narrow sense (in which “the law” comprises the rules of civil and criminal law) aim not at the creation of an order by arrangement but at creating the conditions in which an order will form itself. But the conception of law as a means of order-creation (a term which, as a translation of the equally ambiguous German Ordnungsgestaltung, is now invading Anglo-American jurisprudence11 ) in the hands of public lawyers and civil servants who are primarily concerned with tasks of organization rather than with the conditions of the formation of a spontaneous order, is increasingly interpreted as meaning an instrument of arrangement. This conception of law, which is the conception prevailing in totalitarian states, has characteristically been given its clearest expression by the legal theorist who became Hitler’s chief legal apologist, as “concrete order formation” (konkretes Ordnungsdenken).12 This kind of law aims at creating a concrete preconceived order by putting each individual on a task assigned by authority.

 

 

But though this technique of creating an order is indispensable for organizing the institutions of government and all the enterprises and households which form the elements of the order of society as a whole, it is wholly inadequate for bringing about the infinitely more complex overall order.

 

 

We have it in our power to assure that such an overall order will form itself and will possess certain desirable general characteristics, but only if we do not attempt to control the detail of that order. But we jettison that power and deprive ourselves of the possibility of achieving that abstract order of the whole, if we insist on placing particular pieces into the place we wish them to occupy. It is the condition of the formation of this abstract order that we leave the concrete and particular details to the separate individuals and bind them only by general and abstract rules. If we do not provide this condition but restrict the capacity of the individuals to adjust themselves to the particular circumstances known only to them, we destroy the forces making for a spontaneous overall order and are forced to replace them by deliberate arrangement which, though it gives us greater control over detail, restricts the range over which we can hope to achieve a coherent order.

 

 

IT IS NOT IRRELEVANT to our chief purpose if in conclusion we consider briefly the role which abstract rules play in the coordination not only of the actions of many different persons but also in the mutual adjustment of the successive decisions of a single individual or organization. Here, too, it is often not possible to make detailed plans for action in the more distant future (although what we should do now depends on what we shall want to do in the future), simply because we do not yet know the particular facts which we shall face. The method through which we nevertheless succeed in giving some coherence to our actions is that we adopt a framework of rules for guidance which makes the general pattern though not the detail of our life predictable. It is these rules of which we are often not consciously aware—in many instances rules of a very abstract character—which make the course of our lives orderly. Many of these rules will be “customs” of the social group in which we have grown up and only some will be individual “habits” which we have accidentally or deliberately acquired. But they all serve to abbreviate the list of circumstances which we need to take into account in the particular instances, singling out certain classes of facts as alone determining the general kind of action which we should take. At the same time, this means that we systematically disregard certain facts which we know and which would be relevant to our decisions if we knew all such facts, but which it is rational to neglect because they are accidental partial information which does not alter the probability that, if we could know and digest all the facts, the balance of advantage would be in favor of following the rule.

 

 

It is, in other words, our restricted horizon of knowledge of the concrete facts which makes it necessary to coordinate our actions by submitting to abstract rules rather than to attempt to decide each particular case solely in view of the limited set of relevant particular facts which we happen to know. It may sound paradoxical that rationality should thus require that we deliberately disregard knowledge which we possess; but this is part of the necessity of coming to terms with our unalterable ignorance of much that would be relevant if we knew it. Where we know that the probability is that the unfavorable effects of a kind of action will overbalance the favorable ones, the decision should not be affected by the circumstance that in the particular case a few consequences which we happen to be able to foresee should all be favorable. The fact is that in an apparent striving after rationality in the sense of fuller taking into account all the foreseeable consequences, we may achieve greater irrationality, less effective taking into account of remote effects and an altogether less coherent result. It is the great lesson which science has taught us that we must resort to the abstract where we cannot master the concrete. The preference for the concrete is to renounce the power which thought gives us. It is therefore also not really surprising that the consequence of modern democratic legislation which disdains submitting to general rules and attempts to solve each problem as it comes on its specific merits, is probably the most irrational and disorderly arrangement of affairs ever produced by the deliberate decisions of men.

 

 

New Individualist Review welcomes contributions for publication from its readers. Essays should not exceed 3,000 words, and should be type-written. All manuscripts will receive careful consideration.

 

 

[* ] F. A. Hayek, an editorial advisor of NEW INDIVIDUALIST REVIEW, is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Freiburg and Honorary President of the Mt. Pelerin Society. He is the author of several books, including The Road to Serfdom, The Counter-Revolution of Science, and, most recently, The Constitution of Liberty.

 

 

[1 ] The concept of order has recently achieved a central position in the social sciences largely through the work of Walter Eucken and his friends and pupils, known as the Ordo-circle from the yearbook Ordo issued by them. For other instances of its use, see: J. J. Spengler, “The Problem of Order in Economic Affairs,” Southern Economic Journal, July, 1948, reprinted in J. J. Spengler and W. R. Allen, eds., Essays on Economic Thought (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1960); H. Barth, Die Idee der Ordnung (Zurich: E. Rentsch, 1958); R. Meimberg, Alternativen der Ordnung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1956); and, more remotely relevant as a treatment of some of the philosophical problems involved, W. D. Oliver, Theory of Order (Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch Press, 1951).

 

 

[2 ] For a more extensive treatment of the problem of the scientific treatment of complex phenomena, see my essay, “The Theory of Complex Phenomena,” in Mario A. Bunge, ed.; The Critical Approach: Essays in Honor of Karl Popper (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, Inc., 1963).

 

 

[3 ] For a helpful survey of the abstract/concrete relation and especially its significance in jurisprudence, see K. Englisch, Die Idee der Konkretisierung in Rechtswissenschaft unserer Zeit (Heidelberg: Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, I, 1953).

 

 

[4 ] All three independent discoverers of biological evolution, Darwin, Wallace, and Spencer, admittedly derived their ideas from the current concepts of social evolution.

 

 

[5 ] Cf., e.g., the examples given by Denys Hay, Polydore Vergil (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), ch. 3.

 

 

[6 ] Cf. F. Heinimann, Nomos und Physis (Basel: F. Reinhardt, 1945).

 

 

[7 ] On the inseparability of the genetic and the functional aspects of these phenomena as well as the general relation between organisms and organizations, see Carl Menger, Untersuchungen uber die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1883), which is still the classical treatment of these topics.

 

 

[8 ] Cf. Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), p. 159.

 

 

[9 ] On the whole issue of the relation of unconscious rules to human action, on which I can touch here only briefly, see my essay, “Rules, Perception, and Intelligibility,” Proceedings of the British Academy, v. 48 (1962-63).

 

 

[10 ] There thus seems to be some truth in the alleged original state of goodness in which everybody spontaneously did right and could not do otherwise, and to the idea that only with increased knowledge came wrongdoing. It is only with the knowledge of other possibilities that the individual becomes able to deviate from the established rules; without such knowledge, no sin.

 

 

[11 ] Cf., e.g., E. Bodenheimer, Jurisprudence, the Philosophy and Method of Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 211.

 

 

[12 ] See Carl Schmitt, Die drei Arten des rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens (Hamburg: Schriften fur Akademie fur deutsches Recht, 1934).

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The Theory of Complex Phenomena:  A Precocious Play on the Epistemology of Complexity

1. Pattern Precognition and Pattern Prediction 

Man has been impelled to scientific inquiry by wonder and by need. Of these wonder has been incomparably more fertile. There are good reasons for this. Where we wonder we have already a question to ask. But however urgently we may want to find our way in what appears just chaotic, so long as we do not know what to look for, even the most attentive and persistent observation of the bare facts is not likely to make them more intelligible. Intimate acquaintance with the facts is certainly important ; but systematic observation can start only after problems have arisen. Until we have definite questions to ask we cannot employ our intellect; and questions presuppose that we have formed some provisional hypothesis or theory about the events.1 Questions will arise at first only after our senses have discerned some recurring pattern or order in the events. It is a re-cognition of some regularity (or recurring pattern, or order), of some similar feature in otherwise different circumstances, which makes us wonder and ask 'why?'2 Our minds are so made that when we notice such regularity in diversity we suspect the presence of the same agent and become curious to detect it. It is to this trait of our minds that we owe whatever understanding and mastery of our environment we have achieved. Many such regularities of nature are recognized 'intuitively' by our senses. We see and hear patterns as much as individual events without having to resort to intellectual operations. In many instances these patterns are of course so much part of the environment which we take for granted that they do not cause questions. But where our senses show us new patterns, this causes surprise and questioning. To such curiosity we owe the beginning of science. Marvelous, however, as the intuitive capacity of our senses for pattern recognition is, it is still limited.3 Only certain kinds of regular arrangements (not necessarily the simplest) obtrude themselves on our senses. Many of the patterns of nature we can discover only after they have been constructed by our mind. The systematic construction of such new patterns is the business of mathematics.4 The role which geometry plays in this respect with regard to some visual patterns is merely the most familiar instance of this. The great strength of mathematics is that it enables us to describe abstract patterns which cannot be perceived by our senses, and to state the common properties of hierarchies or classes of patterns of a highly abstract character. Every algebraic equation or set of such equations defines in this sense a class of patterns, with the individual manifestation of this kind of pattern being particularized as we substitute definite values for the variables. It is probably the capacity of our senses spontaneously to recognize certain kinds of patterns that has led to the erroneous belief that if we look only long enough, or at a sufficient number of instances of natural events, a pattern will always reveal itself. That this often is so means merely that in those cases the theorizing has been done already by our senses. Where, however, we have to deal with patterns for the development of which there has been no biological reason, we shall first have to invent the pattern before we can discover its presence in the phenomena-or before we shall be able to test its applicability to what we observe. A theory will always define only a kind (or class) of patterns, and the particular manifestation of the pattern to be expected will depend on the particular circumstances (the 'initial and marginal conditions' to which, for the purposes of this article, we shall refer as 'data'). How much in fact we shall be able to predict will depend on how many of those data we can ascertain.

 The description of the pattern which the theory provides is commonly regarded merely as a tool which will enable us to predict the particular manifestations of the pattern that will appear in specific circumstances. But the prediction that in certain general conditions a pattern of a certain kind will appear is also a significant (and falsifiable) prediction. If I tell somebody that if he goes to my study he will find there a rug with a pattern made up of diamonds and meanders, he will have no difficulty in deciding 'whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result',5 even though I have said nothing about the arrangement, size, colour, etc., of the elements from which the pattern of the rug is formed. The distinction between a prediction of the appearance of a pattern of a certain class and a prediction of the appearance of a particular instance of this class is sometimes important even in the physical sciences. The mineralogist who states that the crystals of a certain mineral are hexagonal, or the astronomer who assumes that the course of a celestial body in the field of gravity of another will correspond to one of the conic sections, make significant predictions which can be refuted. But in general the physical sciences tend to assume that it will in principle always be possible to specify their predictions to any degree desired.6 The distinction assumes, however, much greater importance when we turn from the relatively simple phenomena with which the natural sciences deal, to the more complex phenomena of life, of mind, and of society, where such specifications may not always be possible.7 

2. Degrees of Complexity 

The distinction between simplicity and complexity raises considerable philosophical difficulties when applied to statements. But there seems to exist a fairly easy and adequate way to measure the degree of complexity of different kinds of abstract patterns. The minimum number of elements of which an instance of the pattern must consist in order to exhibit all the characteristic attributes of the class of patterns in question appears to provide an unambiguous criterion. It has occasionally been questioned whether the phenomena of life, of mind, and of society are really more complex than those of the physical world.8 This seems to be largely due to a confusion between the degree of complexity characteristic of a peculiar kind of phenomenon and the degree of complexity to which, by a combination of elements, any kind of phenomenon can be built up. Of course, in this manner physical phenomena may achieve any degree of complexity. Yet when we consider the question from the angle of the minimum number of distinct variables a formula or model must possess in order to reproduce the characteristic patterns of structures of different fields (or to exhibit the general laws which these structures obey), the increasing complexity as we proceed from the inanimate to the ('more highly organized') animate and social phenomena becomes fairly obvious. It is, indeed, surprising how simple in these terms, i.e., in terms of the number of distinct variables, appear all the laws of physics, and particularly of mechanics, when we look through a collection of formulae expressing them.9 On the other hand, even such relatively simple constituents of biological phenomena as feedback (or cybernetic) systems, in which a certain combination of physical structures produces an overall structure possessing distinct characteristic properties, require for their description something much more elaborate than anything describing the general laws of mechanics. In fact, when we ask ourselves by what criteria we single out certain phenomena as 'mechanical' or 'physical', we shall probably find that these laws are simple in the sense defined. Non-physical phenomena are more complex because we call physical what can be described by relatively simple formulae. The 'emergence' of 'new' patterns as a result of the increase in the number of elements between which simple relations exist, means that this larger structure as a whole will possess certain general or abstract features which will recur independently of the particular values of the individual data, so long as the general structure (as described, e.g., by an algebraic equation) is preserved.10 Such 'wholes', defined in terms of certain general properties of their structure, will constitute distinctive objects of explanation for a theory, even though such a theory may be merely a particular way of fitting together statements about the relations between the individual elements. It is somewhat misleading to approach this task mainly from the angle of whether such structures are 'open' or 'closed' systems. There are, strictly speaking, no closed systems within the universe. All we can ask is whether in the particular instance the points of contact through which the rest of the universe acts upon the system we try to single out (and which for the theory become the data) are few or many. These data, or variables, which determine the particular form which the pattern described by the theory will assume in the given circumstances, will be more numerous in the case of complex wholes and much more difficult to ascertain and control than in the case of simple phenomena. What we single out as wholes, or where we draw the 'partition boundary',11 will be determined by the consideration whether we can thus isolate recurrent patterns of coherent structures of a distinct kind which we do in fact encounter in the world in which we live. Many complex patterns which are conceivable and might recur we shall not find it worthwhile to construct. Whether it will be useful to elaborate and study a pattern of a particular kind will depend on whether the structure it describes is persistent or merely accidental. The coherent structures in which we are mainly interested are those in which a complex pattern has produced properties which make self-maintaining the structure showing it. 

3. Pattern Prediction with Incomplete Data 

The multiplicity of even the minimum of distinct elements required to produce (and therefore also of the minimum number of data required to explain) a complex phenomenon of a certain kind creates problems which dominate the disciplines concerned with such phenomena and gives them an appearance very different from that of those concerned with simpler phenomena. The chief difficulty in the former becomes one of in fact ascertaining all the data determining a particular manifestation of the phenomenon in question, a difficulty which is often insurmountable in practice and sometimes even an absolute one.12 Those mainly concerned with simple phenomena are often inclined to think that where this is the case a theory is useless and that scientific procedure demands that we should find a theory of sufficient simplicity to enable us to derive from it predictions of particular events. To them the theory, the knowledge of the pattern, is merely a tool whose usefulness depends entirely on our capacity to translate it into a representation of the circumstances producing a particular event. Of the theories of simple phenomena this is largely true.13 There is, however, no justification for the belief that it must always be possible to discover such simple regularities and that physics is more advanced because it has succeeded in doing this while other sciences have not yet done so. It is rather the other way round : physics has succeeded because it deals with phenomena which, in our sense, are simple. But a simple theory of phenomena which are in their nature complex (or one which, if that expression be preferred, has to deal with more highly organized phenomena) is probably merely of necessity false-at least without a specified ceteris paribus assumption, after the full statement of which the theory would no longer be simple. We are, however, interested not only in individual events, and it is also not only predictions of individual events which can be empirically tested. We are equally interested in the recurrence of abstract patterns as such; and the prediction that a pattern of a certain kind will appear in defined circumstances is a falsifiable (and therefore empirical) statement. Knowledge of the conditions in which a pattern of a certain kind will appear, and of what depends on its preservation, may be of great practical importance. The circumstances or conditions in which the pattern described by the theory will appear are defined by the range of values which may be inserted for the variables of the formula. All we need to know in order to make such a theory applicable to a situation is, therefore, that the data possess certain general properties (or belong to the class defined by the scope of the variables). Beyond this we need to know nothing about their individual attributes so long as we are content to derive merely the sort of pattern that will appear and not its particular manifestation. Such a theory destined to remain 'algebraic',14 because we are in fact unable to substitute particular values for the variables, ceases then to be a mere tool and becomes the final result of our theoretical efforts. Such a theory will, of course, in Popper's terms,15 be one of small empirical content, because it enables us to predict or explain only certain general features of a situation which may be compatible with a great many particular circumstances. It will perhaps enable us to make only what M. Scriven has called 'hypothetical predictions',16 i.e., predictions dependent on yet unknown future events; in any case the range of phenomena compatible with it will be wide and the possibility of falsifying it correspondingly small. But as in many fields this will be for the present, or perhaps forever, all the theoretical knowledge we can achieve, it will nevertheless extend the range of the possible advance of scientific knowledge. The advance of science will thus have to proceed in two different directions : while it is certainly desirable to make our theories as falsifiable as possible, we must also push forward into fields where, as we advance, the degree of falsifiability necessarily decreases. This is the price we have to pay for an advance into the field of complex phenomena.

4. Statistics Impotent to Deal with Pattern Complexity 

Before we further illustrate the use of those mere 'explanations of the principle'17 provided by 'algebraic' theories which describe only the general character of higher-level generalities, and before we consider the important conclusions which follow from the insight into the boundaries of possible knowledge which our distinction provides, it is necessary to turn aside and consider the method which is often, but erroneously, believed to give us access to the understanding of complex phenomena: statistics. Because statistics is designed to deal with large numbers it is often thought that the difficulty arising from the large number of elements of which complex structures consist can be overcome by recourse to statistical techniques. Statistics, however, deals with the problem of large numbers essentially by eliminating complexity and deliberately treating the individual elements which it counts as if they were not systematically connected. It avoids the problem of complexity by substituting for the information on the individual elements information on the frequency with which their different properties occur in classes of such elements, and it deliberately disregards the fact that the relative position of the different elements in a structure may matter. In other words, it proceeds on the assumption that information on the numerical frequencies of the different elements of a collective is enough to explain the phenomena and that no information is required on the manner in which the elements are related. The statistical method is therefore of use only where we either deliberately ignore, or are ignorant of, the relations between the individual elements with different attributes, i.e., where we ignore or are ignorant of any structure into which they are organized. Statistics in such situations enables us to regain simplicity and to make the task manageable by substituting a single attribute for the unascertainable individual attributes in the collective. It is, however, for this reason irrelevant to the solution of problems in which it is the relations between individual elements with different attributes which matters. Statistics might assist us where we had information about many complex structures of the same kind, that is, where the complex phenomena and not the elements of which they consist could be made the elements of the statistical collective. It may provide us, e.g., with information on the relative frequency with which particular properties of the complex structures, say of the members of a species of

organisms, occur together; but it presupposes that we have an independent criterion for identifying structures of the kind in question. Where we have such statistics about the properties of many individuals belonging to a class of animals, or languages, or economic systems, this may indeed be scientifically significant information.18 How little statistics can contribute, however, even in such cases, to the explanation of complex phenomena is clearly seen if we imagine that computers were natural objects which we found in sufficiently large numbers and whose behaviour we wanted to predict. It is clear that we should never succeed in this unless we possessed the mathematical knowledge built into the computers, that is, unless we knew the theory determining their structure. No amount of statistical information on the correlation between input and output would get us any nearer our aim. Yet the efforts which are currently made on a large scale with regard to the much more complex structures which we call organisms are of the same kind. The belief that it must be possible in this manner to discover by observation regularities in the relations between input and output without the possession of an appropriate theory in this case appears even more futile and na�ve than it would be in the case of the computers.19 While statistics can successfully deal with complex phenomena where these are the elements of the population on which we have information, it can tell us nothing about the structure of these elements. It treats them, in the fashionable phrase, as 'black boxes' which are presumed to be of the same kind but about whose identifying characteristics it has nothing to say. Nobody would probably seriously contend that statistics can elucidate even the comparatively not very complex structures of organic molecules, and few would argue that it can help us to explain the functioning of organisms. Yet when it comes to accounting for the functioning of social structures, that belief is widely held. It is here of course largely the product of a misconception about what the aim of a theory of social phenomena is, which is another story. 

5 . The Theory of Evolution as an Instance of Pattern Prediction 

Probably the best illustration of a theory of complex phenomena which is of great value, although it describes merely a general pattern whose detail we can never fill in, is the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. It is significant that this theory has always been something of a stumbling block for the dominant conception of scientific method. It certainly does not fit the orthodox criteria of 'prediction and control' as the hallmarks of scientific method.20 Yet it cannot be denied that it has become the successful foundation of a great part of modern biology. Before we examine its character we must clear out of the way a widely held misconception as to its content. It is often represented as if it consisted of an assertion about the succession of particular species of organisms which gradually changed into each other. This, however, is not the theory of evolution but an application of the theory to the particular events which took place on Earth during the last two billion years or so.21 Most of the misapplications of evolutionary theory (particularly in anthropology and the other social sciences) and its various abuses (e.g., in ethics) are due to this erroneous interpretation of its content. The theory of evolution by natural selection describes a kind of process (or mechanism) which is independent of the particular circumstances in which it has taken place on Earth, which is equally applicable to a course of events in very different circumstances, and which might result in the production of an entirely different set of organisms. The basic conception of the theory is exceedingly simple and it is only in its application to the concrete circumstances that its extraordinary fertility and the range of phenomena for which it can account manifests itself.22 The basic proposition which has this far-reaching implication is that a mechanism of reduplication with transmittable variations and


competitive selection of those which prove to have a better chance of survival will in the course of time produce a great variety of structures adapted to continuous adjustment to the environment and to each other. The validity of this general proposition is not dependent on the truth of the particular applications which were first made of it: if, for example, it should have turned out that, in spite of their structural similarity, man and ape were not joint descendants from a comparatively near common ancestor but were the product of two convergent strands starting from ancestors which differed much more from each other (such as is true of the externally very similar types of marsupial and placental carnivores), this would not have refuted Darwin's general theory of evolution but only the manner of its application to the particular case. The theory as such, as is true of all theories, describes merely a range of possibilities. In doing this it excludes other conceivable courses of events and thus can be falsified. Its empirical content consists in what it forbids.23 If a sequence of events should be observed which cannot be fitted into its pattern, such as, e.g., that horses suddenly should begin to give birth to young with wings, or that the cutting off of a hind-paw in successive generations of dogs should result in dogs being born without that hind-paw, we should regard the theory as refuted.24 The range of what is permitted by the theory is undeniably wide. Yet one could also argue that it is only the limitation of our imagination which prevents us from being more aware of how much greater is the range of the prohibited - how infinite is the variety of conceivable forms of organisms which, thanks to the theory of evolution, we know will not in the foreseeable future appear on Earth. Commonsense may have told us before not to expect anything widely different from what we already knew. But exactly what kinds of variations are within the range of possibility and what kinds are not, only the theory of evolution can tell us. Though we may not be able to write down an exhaustive list of the possibilities, any specific question we shall, in principle, be able to answer. For our present purposes we may disregard the fact that in one respect the theory of evolution is still incomplete because we still know only little about the mechanism of mutation. But let us assume that we knew precisely the circumstances in which (or at least the probability that in given conditions) a particular mutation will appear, and that we similarly knew also the precise advantages which any such mutation would in any particular kind of environment confer upon an individual of a specific constitution. This would not enable us to explain why the existing species or organisms have the particular structures which they possess, nor to predict what new forms will spring from them. The reason for this is the actual impossibility of ascertaining the particular circumstances which, in the course of two billion years, have decided the emergence of the existing forms, or even those which, during the next few hundred years, will determine the selection of the types which will survive. Even if we tried to apply our explanatory scheme to a single species consisting of a known number of individuals each of which we were able to observe, and assuming that we were able to ascertain and record every single relevant fact, their sheer number would be such that we should never be able to manipulate them, i.e., to insert these data into the appropriate blanks of our theoretical formula and then to solve the 'statement equations' thus determined.25 What we have said about the theory of evolution applies to most of the rest of biology. The theoretical understanding of the growth and functioning of organisms can only in the rarest of instances be turned into specific predictions of what will happen in a particular case, because we can hardly ever ascertain all the facts which will contribute to determine the outcome. Hence, 'prediction and control, usually regarded as essential criteria of science, are less reliable in biology'.26 It deals with pattern-building forces, the knowledge of which is useful for creating conditions favourable to the production of certain kinds of results, while it will only in comparatively few cases be possible to control all the relevant circumstances.


 6. Theories of Social Structures 

It should not be difficult now to recognize the similar limitations applying to theoretical explanations of the phenomena of mind and society. One of the chief results so far achieved by theoretical work in these fields seems to me to be the demonstration that here individual events regularly depend on so many concrete circumstances that we shall never in fact be in a position to ascertain them all ; and that in consequence not only the ideal of prediction and control must largely remain beyond our reach, but also the hope remain illusory that we can discover by observation regular connections between the individual events. The very insight which theory provides, for example, that almost any event in the course of a man's life may have some effect on almost any of his future actions, makes it impossible that we translate our theoretical knowledge into predictions of specific events. There is no justification for the dogmatic belief that such translation must be possible if a science of these subjects is to be achieved, and that workers in these sciences have merely not yet succeeded in what physics has done, namely to discover simple relations between a few observables. If the theories which we have yet achieved tell us anything, it is that no such simple regularities are to be expected. I will not consider here the fact that in the case of mind attempting to explain the detail of the working of another mind of the same order of complexity, there seems to exist, in addition to the merely 'practical' yet nevertheless unsurmountable obstacles, also an absolute impossibility: because the conception of a mind fully explaining itself involves a logical contradiction. This I have discussed elsewhere.27 It is not relevant here because the practical limits determined by the impossibility of ascertaining all the relevant data lie so far inside the logical limits that the latter have little relevance to what in fact we can do. In the field of social phenomena only economics and linguistics28 seem to have succeeded in building up a coherent body of theory. I shall confine myself here to illustrating the general thesis with reference to economic theory, though most of what I have to say would appear to apply equally to linguistic theory. Schumpeter well described the task of economic theory when he wrote that 'the economic life of a nonsocialist society consists of millions of relations or flows between individual firms and households. We can establish certain theorems about them, but we can never observe them all.'29 To this must be added that most of the phenomena in which we are interested, such as competition, could not occur at all unless the number of distinct elements involved were fairly large, and that the overall pattern that will form itself is determined by the significantly different behaviour of the different individuals so that the obstacle of obtaining the relevant data cannot be overcome by treating them as members of a statistical collective. For this reason economic theory is confined to describing kinds of patterns which will appear if certain general conditions are satisfied, but can rarely if ever derive from this knowledge any predictions of specific phenomena. This is seen most clearly if we consider those systems of simultaneous equations which since Léon Walras have been widely used to represent the general relations between the prices and the quantities of all commodities bought and sold. They are so framed that if we were able to fill in all the blanks, i.e., if we knew all the parameters of these equations, we could calculate the prices and quantities of all the commodities. But, as at least the founders of this theory clearly understood, its purpose is not 'to arrive at a numerical calculation of prices', because it would be 'absurd' to assume that we can ascertain all the data.30 The prediction of the formation of this general kind of pattern rests on certain very general factual assumptions (such as that most people engage in trade in order to earn an income, that they prefer a larger income to a smaller one, that they are not prevented from entering whatever trade they wish, etc., - assumptions which determine the scope of the variables but not their particular values); it is, however,


not dependent on the knowledge of the more particular circumstances which we would have to know in order to be able to predict prices or quantities of particular commodities. No economist has yet succeeded in making a fortune by buying or selling commodities on the basis of his scientific prediction of future prices (even though some may have done so by selling such predictions). To the physicist it often seems puzzling why the economist should bother to formulate those equations although admittedly he sees no chance of determining the numerical values of the parameters which would enable him to derive from them the values of the individual magnitudes. Even many economists seem loath to admit that those systems of equations are not a step towards specific predictions of individual events but the final results of their theoretical efforts, a description merely of the general character of the order we shall find under specifiable conditions which, however, can never be translated into a prediction of its particular manifestations. Predictions of a pattern are nevertheless both testable and valuable. Since the theory tells us under which general conditions a pattern of this sort will form itself, it will enable us to create such conditions and to observe whether a pattern of the kind predicted will appear. And since the theory tells us that this pattern assures a maximization of output in a certain sense, it also enables us to create the general conditions which will assure such a maximization, though we are ignorant of many of the particular circumstances which will determine the pattern that will appear. It is not really surprising that the explanation of merely a sort of pattern may be highly significant in the field of complex phenomena but of little interest in the field of simple phenomena, such as those of mechanics. The fact is that in studies of complex phenomena the general patterns are all that is characteristic of those persistent wholes which are the main object of our interest, because a number of enduring structures have this general pattern in common and nothing else.31 


7. The Ambiguity of the Claims of Determinism 

The insight that we will sometimes be able to say that data of a certain class (or of certain classes) will bring about a pattern of a certain kind, but will not be able to ascertain the attributes of the individual elements which decide which particular form the pattern will assume, has consequences of considerable importance. It means, in the first instance, that when we assert that we know how something is determined, this statement is ambiguous. It may mean that we merely know what class of circumstances determines a certain kind of phenomena, without being able to specify the particular circumstances which decide which member of the predicted class of patterns will appear; or it may mean that we can also explain the latter. Thus we can reasonably claim that a certain phenomenon is determined by known natural forces and at the same time admit that we do not know precisely how it has been produced. Nor is the claim invalidated that we can explain the principle on which a certain mechanism operates if it is pointed out that we cannot say precisely what it will do at a particular place and time. From the fact that we do know that a phenomenon is determined by certain kinds of circumstances it does not follow that we must be able to know even in one particular instance all the circumstances which have determined all its attributes. There may well be valid and more grave philosophical objections to the claim that science can demonstrate a universal determinism; but for all practical purposes the limits created by the impossibility of ascertaining all the particular data required to derive detailed conclusions from our theories are probably much narrower. Even if the assertion of a universal determinism were meaningful, scarcely any of the conclusions usually derived from it would therefore follow. In the first of the two senses we have distinguished we may, for instance, well be able to establish that every single action of a human being is the necessary result of the inherited structure of his body (particularly of its nervous system) and of all the external influences which have acted upon it since birth. We might even


be able to go further and assert that if the most important of these factors were in a particular case very much the same as with most other individuals, a particular class of influences will have a certain kind of effect. But this would be an empirical generalization based on a ceteris paribus assumption which we could not verify in the particular instance. The chief fact would continue to be, in spite of our knowledge of the principle on which the human mind works, that we should not be able to state the full set of particular facts which brought it about that the individual did a particular thing at a particular time. The individual personality would remain for us as much a unique and unaccountable phenomenon which we might hope to influence in a desirable direction by such empirically developed practices as praise and blame, but whose specific actions we could generally not predict or control, because we could not obtain the information on all the particular facts which determined it. 

8. The Ambiguity of "Relativism 

The same sort of misconception underlies the conclusions derived from the various kinds of 'relativism'. In most instances these relativistic positions on questions of history, culture, or ethics are derived from the erroneous interpretations of the theory of evolution which we have already considered. But the basic conclusion that the whole of our civilization and all human values are the result of a long process of evolution in the course of which values, as the aims of human activity appeared, continue to change, seems inescapable in the light of our present knowledge. We are probably also entitled to conclude that our present values exist only as the elements of a particular cultural tradition and are significant only for some more or less long phase of evolution-whether this phase includes some of our pre-human ancestors or is confined to certain periods of human civilization. We have no more ground to ascribe to them eternal existence than to the human race itself. There is thus one possible sense in which we may legitimately regard human values as relative and speak of the probability of their further evolution. But it is a far cry from this general insight to the claims of the ethical, cultural, or historical relativists or of evolutionary ethics. To put it crudely: while we know that all those values are relative to something, we do not know to what they are relative. We may be able to indicate the general class of circumstances which have made them what they are, but we do not know the particular conditions to which the values we hold are due, or what our values would be if those circumstances had been different. Most of the illegitimate conclusions are the result of the erroneous interpretation of the theory of evolution as the empirical establishment of a trend. Once we recognize that it gives us no more than a scheme of explanation which might be sufficient to explain particular phenomena if we knew all the facts which have operated in the course of history, it becomes evident that the claims of the various kinds of relativism (and of evolutionary ethics) are unfounded. Though we may meaningfully say that our values are determined by a class of circumstances definable in general terms, so long as we cannot state which particular circumstances have produced the existing values, or what our values would be under any specific set of other circumstances, no significant conclusions follow from the assertion. It deserves brief notice in passing how radically opposed are the practical conclusions which are derived from the same evolutionary approach according as it is assumed that we can or cannot in fact know enough about the circumstances to derive specific conclusions from our theory. While the assumption of a sufficient knowledge of the concrete facts generally produces a sort of intellectual hubris which deludes itself that reason can judge all values, the insight into the impossibility of such full knowledge induces an attitude of humility and reverence towards that experience of mankind as a whole that has been precipitated in the values and institutions of existing society. A few observations ought to be added here about the obvious significance of our conclusions for assessing the various kinds of 'reductionism'. In the sense of the first of the distinctions which we have

repeatedly made - in the sense of general description - the assertion that biological or mental phenomena are 'nothing but' certain complexes of physical events, or that they are certain classes of structures of such events, these claims are probably defensible. But in the second sense - � specific prediction - which alone would justify the more ambitious claims made for reductionism, they are completely unjustified. A full reduction would be achieved only if we were able to substitute for a description of events in biological or mental terms a description in physical terms which included an exhaustive enumeration of all the physical circumstances which constitute a necessary and sufficient condition of the biological or mental phenomena in question. In fact such attempts always consist - and can consist only - in the illustrative enumeration of classes of events, usually with an added 'etc.', which might produce the phenomenon in question. Such 'eta-reductions' are not reductions which enable us to dispense with the biological or mental entities, or to substitute for them a statement of physical events, but are mere explanations of the general character of the kind of order or pattern whose specific manifestations we know only through our concrete experience of them.32 


9. The Importance of Our Ignorance 

Perhaps it is only natural that in the exuberance generated by the successful advances of science the circumstances which limit our factual knowledge, and the consequent boundaries imposed upon the applicability of theoretical knowledge, have been rather disregarded. It is high time, however, that we take our ignorance more seriously. As Popper and others have pointed out, 'the more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance'.33 We have indeed in many fields learnt enough to know that we cannot know all that we would have to know for a full explanation of the phenomena. These boundaries may not be absolute. Though we may never know as much about certain complex phenomena as we can know about simple phenomena, we may partly pierce the boundary by deliberately cultivating a technique which aims at more limited objectives - the explanation not of individual events but merely of the appearance of certain patterns or orders. Whether we call these mere explanations of the principle or mere pattern predictions or higher-level theories does not matter. Once we explicitly recognize that the understanding of the general mechanism which produces patterns of a certain kind is not merely a tool for specific predictions but important in its own right, and that it may provide important guides to action (or sometimes indications of the desirability of no action), we may indeed find that this limited knowledge is most valuable. What we must get rid of is the naive superstition that the world must be so organized that it is possible by direct observation to discover simple regularities between all phenomena and that this is a necessary presupposition for the application of the scientific method. What we have by now discovered about the organization of many complex structures should be sufficient to teach us that there is no reason to expect this, and that if we want to get ahead in these fields our aims will have to be somewhat different from what they are in the fields of simple phenomena. 

10. A Postscript on the Role of 'Laws' in the Theory of Complex Phenomena34 

Perhaps it deserves to be added that the preceding considerations throw some doubt on the widely held view that the aim of theoretical science is to establish 'laws' - at least if the word 'law' is used as commonly understood. Most people would probably accept some such definition of 'law' as that 'a scientific law is the rule by which two phenomena are connected with each other according to the principle of causality, that is to say, as cause and effect.'35 And no less an authority than Max Planck is

reported to have insisted that a true scientific law must be expressible in a single equation.36 Now the statement that a certain structure can assume only one of the (still infinite) number of states defined by a system of many simultaneous equations is still a perfectly good scientific (theoretical and falsifiable) statement.37 We might still call, of course, such a statement a 'law', if we so wish (though some people might rightly feel that this would do violence to language); but the adoption of such a terminology would be likely to make us neglectful of an important distinction: for to say that such a statement describes, like an ordinary law, a relation between cause and effect would be highly misleading. It would seem, therefore, that the conception of law in the usual sense has little application to the theory of complex phenomena, and that therefore also the description of scientific theories as 'nomologic' or 'nomothetic' (or by the German term Gesetzeswissenschaften) is appropriate only to those two-variable or perhaps three-variable problems to which the theory of simple phenomena can be reduced, but not to the theory of phenomena which appear only above a certain level of complexity. If we assume that all the other parameters of such a system of equations describing a complex structure are constant, we can of course still call the dependence of one of the latter on the other a 'law' and describe a change in the one as 'the cause' and the change in the other as 'the effect'. But such a 'law' would be valid only for one particular set of values of all the other parameters and would change with every change in any one of them. This would evidently not be a very useful conception of a 'law', and the only generally valid statement about the regularities of the structure in question is the whole set of simultaneous equations from which, if the values of the parameters are continuously variable, an infinite number of particular laws, showing the dependence of one variable upon another, could be derived. In this sense we may well have achieved a very elaborate and quite useful theory about some kind of complex phenomenon and yet have to admit that we do not know of a single law, in the ordinary sense of the word, which this kind of phenomenon obeys. I believe this to be in a great measure true of social phenomena: though we possess theories of social structures, I rather doubt whether we know of any 'laws' which social phenomena obey. It would then appear that the search for the discovery of laws is not an appropriate hall-mark of scientific procedure but merely a characteristic of the theories of simple phenomena as we have defined these earlier; and that in the field of complex phenomena the term 'law' as well as the concepts of cause and effect are not applicable without such modification as to deprive them of their ordinary meaning. In some respect the prevalent stress on 'laws', i.e., on the discovery of regularities in two-variable relations, is probably a result of inductivism, because only such simple co-variation of two magnitudes is likely to strike the senses before an explicit theory or hypothesis has been formed. In the case of more complex phenomena it is more obvious that we must have our theory first before we can ascertain whether the things do in fact behave according to this theory. It would probably have saved much confusion if theoretical science had not in this manner come to be identified with the search for laws in the sense of a simple dependence of one magnitude upon another. It would have prevented such misconception as that, e.g., the biological theory of evolution proposed some definite 'law of evolution' such as a law of the necessary sequence of certain stages or forms. It has of course done nothing of the kind and all attempts to do this rest on a misunderstanding of Darwin's great achievement. And the prejudice that in order to be scientific one must produce laws may yet prove to be one of the most harmful of methodological conceptions. It may have been useful to some extent for the reason given by Popper, that 'simple statements ... are to be prized more highly'38 in all fields where simple statements are significant. But it seems to me that there will always be fields where it can be shown that all such simple statements must be false and where in consequence also the prejudice in favour of 'laws' must be harmful.


 Notes

1. See already Aristotle, Metaphysics; I, 11, 9, 9826b (Loeb ed. p. ij): 'It is through wonder that

men now begin and originally began to philosophize ... it is obvious that they pursued science

for the sake of knowledge, and not for any practical utility' ; also Adam Smith, "The Principles

which Lead and Direct Philosophical Inquiries, as Illustrated by the History of Astronomy', in

Essays, London, 1869, p. 340: 'Wonder, therefore, and not any expectation of advantage from its

discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of philosophy, that

science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances

of nature; and they pursue this study for its own sake, as an original pleasure or good in itself,

without regarding its tendency to procure them the means of many other pleasures.' Is there

really any evidence for the now popular contrary view that, e.g., 'hunger in the Nile Valley led

to the development of geometry' (as Gardner Murphy in the Handbook of Social Psychology,

ed. by Gardner Lindzey, 1954, Vol. II, p. 616, tells us) ? Surely the fact that the discovery of

geometry turned out to be useful does not prove that it was discovered because of its usefulness.

On the fact that economics has in some degree been an exception to the general rule and has

suffered by being guided more by need than by detached curiosity, see my lecture on "The

Trend of Economic Thinking' in Economica, 1933.

2. See K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, London, 1957, p. 121 : 'Science . . . cannot start

with observations, or with the "collection of data", as some students of method believe. Before

we can collect data, our interest in data of a certain kind assist be aroused: the problem always

comes first.' Also in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London, 1959, p. 59: Observation is

always observation in the light of theories'

3. Although in some respects the capacity of our senses for pattern recognition clearly also

exceeds the capacity of our mind for specifying these patterns. The question of the extent to

which this capacity of our senses is the result of another kind of (pre-sensory) experience is

another matter. See, on this and on the general point that all perception involves a theory or

hypothesis, my book The Sensory Order, London and Chicago, 1952, esp. para. 7.37. Cf. also

the remarkable thought expressed by Adam Ferguson (and probably derived from George

Berkeley) in The History of Civil Society, London, 1767, p. 39, that 'the inferences of thought

are sometimes not to be distinguished from the perception of sense'; as well as H. von

Helmholtz's theory of the 'unconscious inferences' involved in most perceptions. For a recent

revival of these ideas see N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, Cambridge University Press,

1958, esp. p. 19, and the views on the role of 'hypotheses' in perception as developed in recent

'cognition theory' by J. S. Bruner, L. Postman and others.

4. Cf. G. H. Hardy, Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge University Press, 1941, p. 14: ?

mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns.'

5. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, p. 1.

6. Though it may be permissible to doubt whether it is in fact possible to predict, e.g., the precise

pattern which the vibrations of an airplane will at a particular moment produce in the standing

wave on the surface of the coffee in my cup.

7. Cf. Michael Scriven, 'A Possible Distinction between Traditional Scientific Disciplines and the

Study of Human Behavior', Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, I, 1956, p. 332 :

"The difference between the scientific study of behavior and that of physical phenomena is thus

partly due to the relatively greater complexity of the simplest phenomena we are concerned to

account for in a behavioral theory.'

8. Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science, New York, 1961, p. 505: 'though social phenomena may

indeed be complex, it is by no means certain that they are in general more complex than

physical and biological phenomena.' See, however, Johann von Neumann, "The General and

Logical Theory of Automata', Cerebral Mechanism in Behavior. The Hixon Symposium, New

York, 195 1, p. 24: 'we are dealing here with parts of logic with which we have practically no

experience. The order of complexity is out of all proportion to anything we have ever known.' It

may be useful to give here a few illustrations of the orders of magnitude with which biology

and neurology have to deal. While the total number of electrons in the Universe has been

estimated at io79 and the number of electrons and protons at 10^sup 100^, there are in

chromosomes with 1,000 locations [genes] with 10 allelomorphs 10^sup 1000^ possible

combinations; and the number of possible proteins is estimated at 10^sup 2700^ (L. von

Bertalanffy, Problems of Life, New York, 1952, p. 103). C. Judson Herrick {Brains of Rats and

Men, New York), suggests that 'during a few minutes of intense cortical activity the number of

interneuronic connections actually made (counting also those that are actuated more than once

in different associational patterns) may well be as great as the total number of atoms in the solar

system' (i.e. 10^sup 56^); and Ralph W. Gerard {Scientific American, September 1953, p. 118)

has estimated that in the course of seventy years a man may accumulate 15 � 10^sup 12^ units

of information ('bits'), which is more than 1,000 times larger than the number of nerve cells.

The further complications which social relations superimpose upon this are, of course, relatively

insignificant. But the point is that if we wanted to 'reduce' social phenomena to physical events,

they would constitute an additional complication, superimposed upon that of the physiological

processes determining mental events.

9. Cf. Warren Weaver, 'A Quarter Century in the Natural Sciences', The Rockefeller Foundation

Annual Report, 1958, Chapter I, 'Science and Complexity', which, when writing this, I knew

only in the abbreviated version which appeared in the American Scientist, XXXVI, 1948.

10. Lloyd Morgan's conception of 'emergence' derives, via G. H. Lewes (Problems of Life and

Mind, ist series, Vol. II, problem V, Ch. III, section headed 'Resultants and Emergents',

American ed., Boston, 1891, p. 368), from John Stuart Mill's distinction of the 'heteropathic'

laws of chemistry and other complex phenomena from the ordinary 'composition of causes' in

mechanics, etc. See his System of Logic, London, 1843, Bk. III, Ch. 6, in Vol. I, p. 431 of the

first edition, and C. Lloyd Morgan, The Emergence of Novelty, London, 1933, p. 12.

11. Lewis White Beck, 'The "Natural Science Ideal" in the Social Sciences', The Scientific Monthly,

LXVIII, June 1949, p. 388.

12. Cf. F. A. Hayek, The Sensory Order, paras. 8.66-8.86.

13. Cf. Ernest Nagel, 'Problems of Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences', in

Science, Language and Human Rights (American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division,

Vol. 1), University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952, p. 620: 'In many cases we are ignorant of the

appropriate initial and boundary conditions, and cannot make precise forecasts even though

available theory is adequate for that purpose.'

14. The useful term 'algebraic theories' was suggested to me by J. W. N. Watkins.

15. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London, 1959, p. 113.

16. M. Scriven, 'Explanation and Prediction in Evolutionary Theory', Science, August 28, 1959, p.

478 and cf. K. R. Popper, 'Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences' (1949), reprinted in

his Conjectures and Refutations, London, 1963, especially pp. 339 et seqq.

17. Cf. F. A. Hayek, 'Degrees of Explanation', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science,

VI, No. 23, 1955, now reprinted as the first essay of the present collection.

18. See F. A. Hayek, Tbe Counter-Revolution of Science, Glencoe, Ul., 1952, pp. 60-63.

19. Cf. J. G. Taylor, 'Experimental Design: A Cloak for Intellectual Sterility', The British Journal of

Psychology, 49, 1958, esp. pp. 107-8.

20. Cf., e.g., Stephen Toulmin, Foresight and Prediction, London, 1961, p. 24: 'No scientist has ever

used this theory to foretell the coming into existence of creatures of a novel species, still less

verified his forecast.'

21. Even Professor Popper seems to imply this interpretation when he writes {Poverty of

Historicism, p. 107) that 'the evolutionary hypothesis is not a universal law of nature but a

particular (or, more precisely, singular) historical statement about the ancestry of a number of

terrestrial plants and animals'. If this means that the essence of the theory of evolution is the

assertion that particular species had common ancestors, or that the similarity of structure always

means a common ancestry (which was the hypothesis from which the theory of evolution was

derived), this is emphatically not the main content of the present theory of evolution. There is,

incidentally, some contradiction between Popper's treatment of the concept of 'mammals' as a

universal (Logic, p. 65) and the denial that the evolutionary hypothesis describes a universal

law of nature. The same process might have produced mammals on other planets.

22. Charles Darwin himself well knew, as he once wrote to Lyell, that 'all the labour consists in the

application of the theory' (quoted by C. C. Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity, Princeton, i960, p.

314).

23. K. R. Popper, Logic, p. 41.

24. Cf. Morton Beckner, The Biological Way of Thought, Columbia University Press, 1954, p. 241.

25. K. R. Popper, Logic, p. 73.

26. Ralph S. Lillie, 'Some Aspects of Theoretical Biology', Philosophy of Science, XV, 2, 1948, p.

119.

27. See The Sensory Order, 8.66-8.86, also The Counter-Revolution of Science, Glencoe, I, 22

1952, p. 48, and the following essay in the present volume.

28. See particularly Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, 's Gravenhage, 1957, who

characteristically seems to succeed in building up such a theory after frankly abandoning the

striving after an inductivist 'discovery procedure' and substituting for it the search after an

'evaluation procedure' which enables him to eliminate false theories of grammars and where

these grammars may be arrived at 'by intuition, guess-work, all sorts of partial methodological

hints, reliance on past experience, etc.' (p. 56).

29. J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press, 1954, p. 241.

30. V. Pareto, Manuel d'�conomie politique, 2nd ed., Paris, 1927, pp. 223-4.

31. A characteristic instance of the misunderstanding of this point (quoted by E. Nagel, p. 61)

occurs in Charles A. Beard, Tbe Nature of the Social Sciences, New York, 1934, 29, where it is

contended that if a science of society 'were a true science, like that of it would enable us to

predict the essential movements of human affairs for the and the indefinite future, to give

pictures of society in the year 2000 or the year 2500 just as astronomers can map the

appearances of the heavens at fixed points of time in future.'

32. Cf. My Counter-Revolution of Science, pp. 48 et seqq., and William Craig, 'Replacement

Auxiliary Expressions', The Philosophical Review, 65, 1956.

33. K. R. Popper, 'On the Sources of Knowledge and Ignorance', Proceedings of tbe British

Academy, 46, i960, p. 69. See also Warren Weaver, ? Scientist Ponders Faith', Saturday Review,

January 3, 1959: 'Is science really gaining in its assault on the totality of the unsolved? As

science learns one answer, it is characteristically true that it also learns several new questions. It

is as though science were working in a great forest of ignorance, making an ever larger circular

clearing within which, not to insist on the pun, things are clear. . . . But, as that circle becomes

larger and larger, the circumference of contact with ignorance also gets longer and longer.

Science learns more and more. But there is an ultimate sense in which it does not gain ; for the

volume of the appreciated but not understood keeps getting larger. We keep, in science, getting

a more and more sophisticated view of our ignorance.'

34. This last section of this essay was not contained in the version originally published and has been

added to this reprint.

35. The particular wording which I happened to come across while drafting this is taken from H.

Kelsen, "The Natural Law Doctrine Before the Tribunal of Science' (1949), reprinted in What is

Justice?, University of California Press, i960, p. 139. It seems to express well a widely held

view.

36. Sir Karl Popper comments on this that it seems extremely doubtful whether any single one of

Maxwell's equations could be said to express anything of real significance if we knew none of

the others; in fact, it seems that the repeated occurrence of the symbols in the various equations

is needed to secure that these symbols have the intended meanings.

37. Cf. K. R. Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery, � 17, p. 73 : 'Even if the system of equations

does not suffice for a unique solution, it does not allow every conceivable combination of

values to be substituted for the "unknowns" (variables). Rather, the system of equations

characterizes certain combinations of values or value systems as admissible, and others as

inadmissible; it distinguishes the class of admissible value systems from the ckss of

inadmissible value systems.' Note also the application of this in the following passages to

'statement equations'.

38. Ibid., p. 142.

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