… is from page 656 of the 1988 collection of Lord Acton’s writings and notes to himself (edited by the late J. Rufus Fears), Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality; specifically, it’s a note drawn from Acton’s extensive papers at Cambridge University:
We contemplate our ideas in the sunlight of heaven, and apply them in the darkness of earth.
DBx: Yes.
The human mind, unable to comprehend the countless details always in play in real-world human society, necessarily forms its theories about society, including about the economy, abstractly. An essential feature of a sound theory is recognition of the inescapable, irreducible complexity of reality. Such a theory will therefore never attempt to describe or predict in detail; it also warns against the hubris of the human mind attempting to do too much.
Unsound theories – which are the playthings of unwise or arrogant individuals – treat the limited features of reality that can be comprehended by the human mind as all that is relevant about reality. Pleased with the pretty and always simple pictures conjured by such abstract theorizing, unwise or arrogant individuals mistakenly conclude that their theories – their pretty and simple pictures – are reliable guides to all the details of reality that must be dealt with if reality is to be made to look like their pretty pictures.
It’s best to have simple rules for a complex world.
