Wassily Leontief quote from "Theoretical Assumptions and Nonobserved Facts." Lars P. Syll’s BlogMainstream economics — like butter scraped over too much breadLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University
Read More »Noah Smith — “Theory vs. Data” in statistics too
Important. I think Noah has this right. Fit the tool to the job, rather than the job to the tool. Aristotle defined speculative knowledge in terms of causal explanation. This definition stuck although Aristotle's analysis of causality did not. In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle places the following crucial condition on proper knowledge: we think we have knowledge of a thing only when we have grasped its cause (APost. 71 b 9–11. Cf. APost. 94 a 20). That proper knowledge is knowledge...
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