I.1
A SCIENCE only advances with certainty, when the plan of inquiry and the object of our researches have been clearly defined; otherwise a small number of truths are loosely laid hold of, without their connexion being perceived, and numerous errors, without being enabled to detect their fallacy.
…

I.5
The wide range taken into the field of pure politics, whilst investigating the subject of political economy, seemed to furnish a much stronger reason for including in the same inquiry agriculture, commerce and the arts, the true sources of wealth, and upon which laws have but an accidental and indirect influence. Thence what interminable digressions! If, for example, commerce constitutes a branch of political economy, all the various kinds of commerce form a part; and as a consequence, maritime commerce, navigation, geography—where shall we stop? All human knowledge is connected. Accordingly, it is necessary to ascertain the points of contact, or the articulations by which the different branches are united; by this means, a more exact knowledge will be obtained of whatever is peculiar to each, and where they run into one another.
I.6
In the science of political economy, agriculture, commerce and manufactures are considered only in relation to the increase or diminution of wealth, and not in reference to their processes of execution. This science indicates the cases in which commerce is truly productive, where whatever is gained by one is lost by another, and where it is profitable to all; it also teaches us to appreciate its several processes, but simply in their results, at which it stops. Besides this knowledge, the merchant must also understand the processes of his art. He must be acquainted with the commodities in which he deals, their qualities and defects, the countries from which they are derived, their markets, the means of their transportation, the values to be given for them in exchange, and the method of keeping accounts.
I.7
The same remark is applicable to the agriculturist, to the manufacturer, and to the practical man of business; to acquire a thorough knowledge of the causes and consequences of each phenomenon, the study of political economy is essentially necessary to them all; and to become expert in his particular pursuit, each one must add thereto a knowledge of its processes. These different subjects of investigation were not, however, confounded by Dr. Smith; but neither he, nor the writers who succeeded him, have guarded themselves against another source of confusion, here important to be noticed, inasmuch as the developments resulting from it, may not be altogether unuseful in the progress of knowledge in general, as well as in the prosecution of our own particular inquiry.

I.8
In political economy, as in natural philosophy, and in every other study, systems have been formed before facts have been established; the place of the latter being supplied by purely gratuitous assertions. More recently, the inductive method of philosophizing, which, since the time of Bacon, has so much contributed to the advancement of every other science, has been applied to the conduct of our researches in this. The excellence of this method consists in only admitting facts carefully observed, and the consequences rigorously deduced from them; thereby effectually excluding those prejudices and authorities which, in every department of literature and science, have so often been interposed between man and truth. But, is the whole extent of the meaning of the term, facts, so often made use of, perfectly understood?
I.9
It appears to me, that this word at once designates objects that exist, and events that take place; thus presenting two classes of facts: it is, for example, one fact, that such an object exists; another fact, that such an event takes place in such a manner. Objects that exist, in order to serve as the basis of certain reasoning, must be seen exactly as they are, under every point of view, with all their qualities. Otherwise, whilst supposing ourselves to be reasoning respecting the same thing, we may, under the same name, be treating of two different things.
I.10
The second class of facts, namely, events that take place, consists of the phenomena exhibited, when we observe the manner in which things take place. It is, for instance, a fact, that metals, when exposed to a certain degree of heat, become fluid.
I.11
The manner in which things exist and take place, constitutes what is called the nature of things; and a careful observation of the nature of things is the sole foundation of all truth.

I.12
Hence, a twofold classification of sciences; namely, those which may be styled descriptive, which arrange and accurately designate the properties of certain objects, as botany and natural history; and those which may be styled experimental, which unfold the reciprocal action of substances on each other, or in other words, the connexion between cause and effect, as chemistry and natural philosophy. Both departments are founded on facts, and constitute an equally solid and useful portion of knowledge. Political economy belongs to the latter; in showing the manner in which events take place in relation to wealth, it forms a part of experimental science.*3
I.13
But facts that take place may be considered in two points of view; either as general or constant, or as particular or variable. General facts are the results of the nature of things in all analogous cases; particular facts as truly result from the nature of things, but they are the result of several operations modified by each other in a particular case. The former are not less incontrovertible than the latter, even when apparently they contradict each other. In natural philosophy, it is a general fact, that heavy bodies fall to the earth; the water in a fountain, nevertheless, rises above it. The particular fact of the fountain is a result wherein the laws of equilibrium are combined with those of gravity, but without destroying them.
I.14
In our present inquiry, the knowledge of these two classes of facts, namely, of objects that exist and of events that take place, embraces two distinct sciences, political economy and statistics.
I.15
Political economy, from facts always carefully observed, makes known to us the nature of wealth; from the knowledge of its nature deduces the means of its creation, unfolds the order of its distribution, and the phenomena at tending its destruction. It is, in other words, an exposition of the general facts observed in relation to this subject. With respect to wealth, it is a knowledge of effects and of their causes. It shows what facts are constantly conjoined with; so that one is always the sequence of the other. But it does not resort for any further explanations to hypothesis: from the nature of particular events their concatenations must be perceived; the science must conduct us from one link to another, so that every intelligent understanding may clearly comprehend in what manner the chain is united. It is this which constitutes the excellence of the modern method of philosophizing.

In a better world, we’d be seeing things like this (and good, abstract but concretized debates and arguments about it) on television — and people would care.

The Campaign for Liberty has a good series of videos (each about 10 or 15 minutes long) in which economics professors discuss a chapter or two of the book.

The book will give you a much clearer understanding of economics, clear thinking, proper thinking, and today’s events. The book is a short, 150 (or so) pages. Or, if you disagree with the book, it will give you some serious arguments you must address.

I must say that James (of James’s Liberty file), Ron Paul, and the Libertarians want liberty without a moral or philosophic foundation. Think about that one. Would that not be like trying to practice civil or aeronautical engineering without physics or mathematics? And without a philosophy of science and mathematics?

Don’t think for a second that a “philosophy of mathematics” is abstruse and abstract and arm-chair stuff only. It has very practical implications — just as a philosophy of education makes all the difference in the world as to the nature of the education our children get, what their day-to-day activities are, and whether our children learn to reason and become independent, self-sovereign adults or whether they become tortured emotional wrecks who don’t understand the world, don’t know how, and don’t know how to make any important decisions for themselves.

A philosophy of mathematics can make someone regard math as a game, as an intellectual exercise in futility, as a confusing heap of symbols, as a mystery cult — or as a means of understanding important, fundamental aspects of reality, as a means of controlling things in the world, as a means of gaining insight into how a rational consciousness works.

So also one cannot intellectually have freedom for free: freedom won’t survive, for example, under anarchy, which some Libertarians support. Anarchy would give us gang-warfare run amuck. It would give us The Lord of the Flies on a massive scale. It would give us waves of small and large destruction sweeping over us as in the Middle Ages. These are serious facts that someone who believes in liberty under anarchy must address — then they still have to deal with questions of putting their theory into practice, of morality, of human nature, of epistemology.

Nor is freedom tenable under just any political and moral conditions. Socrates was voted to death in the democracy of ancient Athens; the Founding Fathers — after scholarly study of history, politics and philosophy — viewed democracy as a perversion of government. There has not been one theocracy that I am aware of that has not practiced human sacrifice or oppression. These are serious facts that someone who believes in liberty under democracy or theocracy must address — then they still have to deal with questions of putting their theory into practice, of morality, of human nature, of epistemology.

An approach to liberty must be scientific: based on facts, inductive, and integrated with the rest of one’s knowledge of reality. An approach to liberty — that is tenable and practical — cannot be floating and cannot be isolated from the rest of one’s knowledge and of reality.

In defending — or opposing — liberty, some questions one must ask and answer are: What is man? What are his most important values? How does he survive? Is man free or is he a determined being? How does man gain knowledge? What are the principles needed for man to live in society? What is the relation of man to society? Which is more important: the individual or the group?

Chef Bruce Aidell’s mango and jalapeno chicken-and-turkey sausage; cantaloupe; blueberries; blackberries; white Stilton cheese with apricot pieces. And hot coffee.

Yum.

Wow…I just learned how to spell cantaloupe. It’s not cantelope. The folks at Dictionary.com say:

1730–40; < F, allegedly after Cantaluppi, a papal estate near Rome where cultivation of this melon is said to have begun in Europe, though a comparable It word is not attested until much later than the F word, and Cantaloup, a village in Languedoc, has also been proposed as the source.  From cantaloupe. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cantaloupe (accessed: January 24, 2009).

Interesting.

The amazing thing about this breakfast is what it shows about economics, capitalism and technology. (N.B. We have only partial elements and remnants of capitalism today; we do not have capitalism proper in the world — capitalism goes part and parcel with property rights which go part and parcel with natural, individual human rights…which are routinely violated today, not respected and protected.)

The sausage is, I think, from the US. Chef Aidell’s company is located in California, anyway. The white Stilton cheese came from England. The cantaloupe came from Honduras. The blueberries came from Chile. The blackberries came from Mexico. I don’t know where the coffee came from.

Not to mention the plate on which I ate, the plastic containers and labeling for the cantaloupe, blackberries and blueberries, the packaging for the sausage, the pan I cooked the sausage in, the coffee pot, the coffee machine, my coffee mug, the stove top, the electricity, the wood and metal and glass for home…

The magnitude of the production process — its scope in time and geography — is mind-boggling.

It would take all day and more to trace the production process back in time to its beginnings and to include all of it. Actually, no one person probably has the time to do all that. We’d have to sketch out the process. But we don’t need to trace out every item in the production process to its first root. We can use induction.

Thank goodness for the validity of induction, for the fact that we can validly generalize from some things to all things…as long as our reasoning process follows the rules and canons of induction.

But a suggestion of a hint of a sketch backwards of part of the production process involved in my breakfast would be like this:

1.  I had to buy the blackberries at HEB. I had to work to earn the money to buy them, drive to the store to buy them, drive home to store them in my refrigerator. And how did my knowledge for work; my communication/advertising with people to get clients; my truck; my refrigerator; my bank get here? We’d have to trace back each of those things in the production process.

2.  HEB had to get the blackberries. They had to order them, have them delivered; they had to have their store built; they had to have refrigeration and electricity to pay for the refrigeration; they had to have employees which they had to plan for and hire. How did each of these things get there? What production process and thought process was responsible for them?

3.  The blackberries had to get from a farm to the HEB store. So the berries were grown on a farm, packaged, sent somewhere where they could then be sent to a shipping company. The berries would then need to be trucked by land or shipped by sea to the US. They go to some company that then sends the berries to a distribution center which then trucks the berries to my local HEB. Then we wonder. Farm. Soil. Manure. Seeds. Water. Knowledge of agriculture. Workers. Machinery. Ships. Trucks. Buildings. How did each of these things get there? What production process and thought process was responsible for them?

Wow…mind-boggling…