>if so, we agree. I cannot think of anytime I disagreed with you. The more I think about this, the more I think I disagree only with the people I disagree with, but, one always has to keep that critical inquiry going and not tule out the possibility you might disagree.
>It's also extremely hard to disprove (or "falsify") a proposition empirically. Most propositions have "ceteris paribus" clauses which can be invoked to defend the prop. This is true, which is another reason why Benjamin Disraeli referred to "lies, damn lies and statistics". However, statistics are indispensable to place the problem in proportion, and even it is not possible to conclusively prove or disprove a theorem, it is often possible to prove a margin of error, i.e. the limits within which quantitative variation can occur. This is an important corrective to rootless theorising which attaches enormous importance to something which, in the wider scheme of things, really just isn't so important. >For example, in macro, empirical evidence has seemingly destroyed the "monetarist" proposition that rapid increases in the money supply always & everywhere cause inflation (since it turns out that "velocity" is unstable and the relevant money supply changes over time, often in an endogenously-driven way). But there are some people who honestly continue to defend this proposition. (They may be honest despite their politic positions, which are bad in my perspective.) Yes, and Imre Lakatos explains why that is the case (showing also that Popper's idea of "crucial experiments" is strictly speaking false or at any rate must be relativised). When I was a university, I have a friend and he wrote a paper on this, applying the Lakatosian interpretation to the history of economic thought, with a Marxian interpretation of the objective conditions within which theorising took place. My own interest as Education student at that time, was in "historical learning", i.e. from the same historical experience different people can conclude different things depending on the theories they use to interpret the experience. You have these historical learning processes and you can say at any time that in relation to a specific event, people of a particular generation drew a particular conclusion, maybe influence by their social station in life, but that conclusion was drawn, and that remains in memory as a basis for present and future evaluations or orientations. This is actually a specific problem in Marxian-type political theory, because we try to get people to draw specific lessons from real historical experience rationally understood, and not bother with false prophets or detractors and so on. Another application might be in regard to the fact, that the PNAC-type people drew particular conclusions from the experience they had in the past, and this shaped their policies, their thinking, and that experience also defines the dynamic of their thinking. Jurriaan
