… is from Nobel-laureate economist James Buchanan’s October 17th, 1960, letter to the Ford Foundation’s Kermit Gordon, as this letter appears on pages 76-81 of David Levy’s and Sandra Peart’s superb 2020 volume from Cambridge University Press, Towards an Economics of Natural Equals: A Documentary History of the Early Virginia School:
In my view, the essential content of the inquiring spirit or atmosphere lies in the explicit acceptance of what may be called scientific morality. By this I mean a willingness to search for and to accept truth, regardless of where it may lead us, and to accept all currently-established truths as, in one sense, relative and subject to modification upon the progressive development of new ideas.


In my view, the essential content of the inquiring spirit or atmosphere lies in the explicit acceptance of what may be called scientific morality. By this I mean a willingness to search for and to accept truth, regardless of where it may lead us, and to accept all currently-established truths as, in one sense, relative and subject to modification upon the progressive development of new ideas.
