Written toward the end of Mises's life, his last monograph, "The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science", returned to science, economics as a science based on human action. Mises believed that, since the publication of "Human Action", economists and scientists alike had misinterpreted the idea of economics as a science by deeming it epistemological positivism - that they believed that the "science" basis was still more rooted in philosophy than in actual science. In this volume, Mises argued that economics is a science because human action is a natural order of life and that it is the actions of humans that determine markets and capital decisions. Since Mises believed these links could be proven scientifically, he concluded that economics, with its basis on that human action, is indeed a science in its own right and not an ideology or a metaphysical doctrine. What has been described as his most passionate work, "The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science" brings together all of the themes from Mises's previous work.
Preface to the Second Edition xi
Some Preliminary Observations Concerning Praxeology
Instead of an Introduction 1
1 The Permanent Substratum of Epistemology 1
2 On Action 2
3 On Economics 3
4 The Starting Point of Praxeological Thinking 4
5 The Reality of the External World 5
6 Causality and Teleology 6
7 The Category of Action 7
8 The Sciences of Human Action 7
CHAPTER 1 The Human Mind 9
1 The Logical Structure of the Human Mind 9
2 A Hypothesis about the Origin of the A Priori
Categories 12
3 The A Priori 15
4 The A Priori Representation of Reality 16
5 Induction 18
6 The Paradox of Probability Empiricism 23
7 Materialism 25
8 The Absurdity of Any Materialistic Philosophy 26
CHAPTER 2 The Activistic Basis of Knowledge 30
1 Man and Action 30
2 Finality 31
3 Valuation 33
4 The Chimera of Unified Science 34
5 The Two Branches of the Sciences of Human Action 36
6 The Logical Character of Praxeology 39
7 The Logical Character of History 40
8 The Thymological Method 41
CHAPTER 3 Necessity and Volition 47
1 The Infinite 47
2 The Ultimate Given 48
3 Statistics 49
4 Free Will 51
5 Inevitability 54
CHAPTER 4 Certainty and Uncertainty 56
1 The Problem of Quantitative Definiteness 56
2 Certain Knowledge 57
3 The Uncertainty of the Future 58
4 Quantification and Understanding in Acting
and in History 59
5 The Precariousness of Forecasting in Human Affairs 60
6 Economic Prediction and the Trend Doctrine 61
7 Decision-Making 62
8 Confirmation and Refutability 62
9 The Examination of Praxeological Theorems 64
CHAPTER 5 On Some Popular Errors Concerning the
Scope and Method of Economics 66
1 The Research Fable 66
2 The Study of Motives 67
3 Theory and Practice 69
4 The Pitfalls of Hypostatization 70
5 On the Rejection of Methodological Individualism 72
6 The Approach of Macroeconomics 74
7 Reality and Play 78
8 Misinterpretation of the Climate of Opinion 81
9 The Belief in the Omnipotence of Thought 82
10 The Concept of a Perfect System of Government 85
11 The Behavioral Sciences 91
CHAPTER 6 Further Implications of the Neglect of
Economic Thinking 94
1 The Zoological Approach to Human Problems 94
2 The Approach of the 'Social Sciences' 95
3 The Approach of Economics 98
4 A Remark about Legal Terminology 99
5 The Sovereignty of the Consumers 101
CHAPTER 7 The Epistemological Roots of Monism 104
1 The Nonexperimental Character of Monism 104
2 The Historical Setting of Positivism 106
3 The Case of the Natural Sciences 108
4 The Case of the Sciences of Human Action 109
5 The Fallacies of Positivism 110
CHAPTER 8 Positivism and the Crisis of Western Civilization 113
1 The Misinterpretation of the Universe 113
2 The Misinterpretation of the Human Condition 114
3 The Cult of Science 116
4 The Epistemological Support of Totalitarianism 117
5 The Consequences 120
Index 121
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