Quotation of the Day…

Tweet

… is from page 369 of F.A. Hayek’s Nobel lecture, “The Pretence of Knowledge,” as this lecture is reprinted in the 2014 collection, The Market and Other Orders (Bruce Caldwell, ed.), of some of Hayek’s essays on spontaneous-ordering forces:

The conflict between what in its present mood the public expects science to achieve in satisfaction of popular hopes and what is really in its power is a serious matter because, even if the true scientists should all recognize the limitations of what they can do in the field of human affairs, so long as the public expects more there will always be some who will pretend, and perhaps honestly believe, that they can do more to meet popular demands than is really in their power. It is often difficult enough for the expert, and certainly in many instances impossible for the layman, to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate claims advanced in the name of science.

DBx: Yes.

Fifty years ago today – on October 9th, 1974 – the announcement was made that Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics.