menu_book Epistemology
Theory of knowledge and understanding
format_quote Quotes
"To be rational is not simply to calculate correctly. It is to be able to ask what is true — not only what is useful. The animal that solves a problem has no interest in truth as such. The human being who asks a question is already asking whether reality is really what it appears to be."
menu_book What Is Distinctive to Man
View Full Quote"What is properly human is the capacity to step back from oneself — to take a distance from one's own drives, one's own history, one's own perspective — and to ask whether what one is doing is good. No animal can call itself into question."
menu_book What Is Distinctive to Man
View Full Quote"Religion is not primarily a set of beliefs, nor a system of practices, nor a community. These are its expressions. Its essence lies in a certain relationship — to a source of goodness and being that one has not produced oneself and from which one continues to receive."
menu_book On Religion
View Full QuoteView Full Quote"The world doesn't just contain optimists and pessimists, and wise and unwise technology users. It contains enemies of civilization as well. And knowledge is impartial. It can be used for good or evil. But the enemies of civilization all necessarily have one thing in common. They are wrong. And so they fear error correction and truth. And that's why they resist changes in their ideas, which makes them less creative and slower to innovate. So our defense against the existential danger from malevolent uses of technology, the only defense, is speed. The good guys must use their only advantage to stay ahead."
"Problems are soluble. Given the right knowledge, any problem can be solved. The key is that we must be open to creating that knowledge through conjecture and criticism."
menu_book The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
View Full Quote"The task of the theoretician in the realm of economy is above all to teach us to understand concrete phenomena of human economy as exemplifications of a certain regularity in the succession of phenomena, i.e., as exemplifications of laws of phenomena."
menu_book Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences
View Full Quote"The pattern is: (1) The anointed assert that there is some grave danger or crisis. (2) The anointed propose some course of action to deal with it. (3) Evidence that the proposed course of action has made things worse is either ignored or explained away. (4) The anointed proceed as if the policy were working, blaming any remaining problems on the inadequacy of commitment to the policy."
menu_book The Vision of the Anointed
View Full Quote"The vision of the anointed is not simply a vision of the world and its functioning in descriptive terms, but is also a vision of themselves and of their place in the world. Self-congratulation is part of that vision, as is a disdain for the benighted masses who do not share it."
menu_book The Vision of the Anointed
View Full Quote"The constrained vision sees the evils of the world as deriving from the limited and biased nature of man himself — and therefore sees the social challenge as being to make the best of the possibilities which exist within that constraint, rather than to try to change human nature."
menu_book A Conflict of Visions
View Full QuoteView Full Quote"There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. And you try to get the best trade-off you can get. That's all you can hope for."
"In the unconstrained vision, human nature is not fixed but is capable of being changed by social institutions and social policies. If human beings are capable of improvement — even of perfection — then the question of how to design the best society, with the best social institutions, is a much more open-ended question than if human nature is treated as a given constraint."
menu_book A Conflict of Visions
View Full Quoteauto_stories Books
A Conflict of Visions
Sowell's landmark 1987 work arguing that the deepest divide in political and social thought is not between left and right, but between two fundamen...
Read MoreThe Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
Exploration of how explanatory knowledge grows and transforms our understanding, arguing that all progress comes from the quest for good explanations
Read MoreHuman Action: A Treatise on Economics
Ludwig von Mises' magnum opus and the most comprehensive systematic treatment of economics from the Austrian School perspective. Mises develops pra...
Read MoreInvestigations into the Method of the Social Sciences
Menger's methodological work defending the Austrian approach to economics against the German Historical School. This book established the theoretic...
Read MoreKnowledge and Decisions
Analysis of how knowledge is used in economic decision-making, examining the role of prices, incentives, and institutions in coordinating dispersed...
Read MoreWhat Is Distinctive to Man
Brague's inquiry into what distinguishes the human being from all other animals. Drawing on philosophy, biology, and theology, he examines the capa...
Read MoreThe Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality
Collection of essays defending scientific rationality and critical discussion against relativism and the idea that meaningful communication is impo...
Read MoreThe Vision of the Anointed
The 1995 sequel to *A Conflict of Visions*, focusing specifically on the unconstrained vision as held by a self-appointed intellectual elite — 'the...
Read Moreperson Authors
psychology Concepts
Münchhausen Trilemma
A fundamental problem in epistemology demonstrating that any attempt to justify a claim of knowledge inevitably leads to one of three unsatisfactor...
Learn MoreThe Principle of Optimism
All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. This principle, articulated by physicist and philosopher school Philosophy psychology Knowledge wb_sunny Optimism menu_book Epistemology