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The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics

Book by Vernon L. Smith · 3 quotes · Adam Smith, Economics, Religion

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The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics Quotes

“As Einstein once said, “It is the theory which decides what can be observed.” But I must add that prior to theory there is what we call “thinking”—a systematic form of consciousness deeply driven by the unconscious that enables understanding and experimental predictions The parallel is expressed in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (KJV). For humans, all beginnings are in thought or reason. And in the reductionist search for reality, science can only identify mind, first in thing shopped for, then in the assurance of unseen evidence.”

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Book:The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics
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“Samuel Gregg: Smith underscores, however, that the Scots also focused on another form of rationality: the reasonableness that is embodied and conveyed through time by un-designed habits, customs, and rules. We often do not fully understand the importance of such traditions, as Edmund Burke noted, until we dispose of them. A hallmark of Smith’s work is his study of how such knowledge helps to mold political and economic outcomes. One Means by which such knowledge has been conveyed through time, Smith states, is religion. In a long footnote to his Nobel lecture, Smith stressed religion’s role in shaping the morality needed for cohesive social behavior.”

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“In his 2001 book, Economics as Religion, economist Robert Nelson recounted the ways in which economics came to operate in society with its own religion-like structure. Nelson argues that modern economics has operated in many ways as a secularized version of Protestant theology in which the primary evil is economics scarcity and in which deliverance from this evil (and the attainment of heaven on earth) will come through application of economic science to promote efficiency (and fairness) in production and distribution. In this worldview, economists, as technical advisors to governmental managers, serve as a new “scientific” priesthood effecting a secular salvation of human society through the application of constructivist reason, the sort of reasoning that seeks to deliberately design choices and institutions to generate what are perceived as “optimal” outcomes. Here, then, within the very discipline to which Vernon Smith has devoted his life’s work, there seems to be a persistent tendency if not to outright materialism then to a reduction of human rationality within constructivist constraints. As Smith acknowledges, “predominantly, both economists and psychologists are reluctant to allow that naive and unsophisticated agents can achieve socially optimal ends without a comprehensive understanding of the whole, as well as their individual parts, implemented by deliberate action. There is no magic.”

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Book:The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics
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