The Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory: A Reply to Professor Knight

PROFESSOR KNIGHT opened his thirty-two-page Blitzkrieg on my essay by remarking that many thoughtful people in the world ask the question of our title "'What is Truth' in Economics?" At the outset I must beg to disclaim any place among these thoughtful people, as I have never, in print at least, either asked or tried to answer this question and have no intention of ever doing so. The questions to which, as Professor Knight said, I volunteered an answer without waiting to be asked were much less general and much less ambitious, and also much less imprecise. They will be found formulated throughout the book on which Professor Knight has kindly volunteered his extensive criticisms. My gratitude to Professor Knight for his comments (in addition to a debt incurred when I first read Risk, Uncertainty and Projit, as an undergraduate) is, I am sorry to say, considerably modified by the fact that he unfortunately allowed himself, as he said, to be-in A.D. 1940"particularly irritated" by my "methodology or philosophy of economics." His irritation was not even assuaged by the reflection (p. i), which he said he found so comforting, that such books as mine "probably do not do much damage," being "more interesting .... to their authors than .... to any considerable number of readers" and are only "likely to be read and taken seriously by the young." (By the