The document discusses key differences between social science and natural science. Social science relies on understanding meaning and purpose of human action, while natural science can conduct experiments. While social science verifies theory through facts, natural science builds theory from experimentally established facts. Specifically in history, we can understand unique conditions but cannot achieve the objectivity of natural sciences. The document warns against applying methods of natural sciences like mathematics to social sciences inappropriately. Overall, it emphasizes social science examines purposeful human behavior through reason, in contrast to natural science examining external phenomena.

1. Social Science and Natural Science
by
Ludwig von Mises
Summarized by
Tayyiba Mushtaq.
Zhejiang University China. tayyiba@zju.edu.cn

2. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)
He was born on 29th Sep.1881 in Lemberg ( now Lvov) .
Entering the University of Vienna at the turn of the century as a leftist interventionist, the young Mises discovered
Principles of Economics by Carl Menger, the founding work of the Austrian School of economics, and was quickly
converted to the Austrian emphasis on individual action rather than unrealistic mechanistic equations as the unit of
economics analysis, and to the importance of a free-market economy
Human Action is the most important book on political economy you will ever own. It was (and remains) the most
comprehensive, systematic, forthright, and powerful defense of the economics of liberty ever written
Economics does not allow any breaking up into special branches. It invariably deals with the
interconnectedness of all phenomena of acting and economizing. All economic facts mutually condition one
another. Each of the various economic problems must be dealt with in the frame of a comprehensive
system assigning its due place and weight to every aspect of human wants and desires. All monographs
remain fragmentary if not integrated into a systematic treatment of the whole body of social and economic
relations.
Economics deals with society's fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the
main and proper study of every citizen."
Human Action

3. Part 1
The foundations of the modern social sciences were laid in the eighteenth century.
Before eighteenth century the belief prevailed that in the field of human action no other criterion could be used than that of
good and bad.
In the eighteenth century the founders of Political
Economy discovered regularity in the operation of the market.eg: a certain state of prices--This insight opened a new
chapter in science
Economic theory has for some time been a general theory of human action, of human choice and preference.
HUMAN action is purposeful behavior. Or we may say: Action is will
put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends
and goals, is the ego’s meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions
of its environment, is a person’s conscious adjustment to the state of the
universe that determines his life.
Action is not simply giving preference. Man also shows preference in
situations in which things and events are unavoidable or are believed to be
so. Thus a man may prefer sunshine to rain and may wish that the sun would
(scatter) dispel the clouds. He who only wishes and hopes does not interfere actively
with the course of events and with the shaping of his own destiny. But acting
man chooses, determines, and tries to reach an end. Of two things both of
which he cannot have together he selects one and gives up the other. Action
therefore always involves both taking and renunciation (sacrificing)

4. Part 2
The elements of social cognition( the act or process of knowing; perception) are abstract so to make them easier
to visualize one has to use metaphorical (resemblance ,Simile, Compare) language. The writers like
Lilienfeld overworked for it. Modern Mechanistic metaphor related with positivist view of social science.
Positivism :a philosophical system founded by Auguste Comte, concerned with positive facts and phenomena
. Positivism refers to a set of epistemological perspectives and philosophies of science which hold that the
scientific method is the best approach to uncovering the processes by which both physical and human
events occur. Though the positivist approach has been a 'recurrent theme in the history of western thought
from the Ancient Greeks to the present day' [1] the concept was developed in the early 19th century by the
philosopher and founding sociologist, Auguste Comte.
. Positivism asserts that the only authentic knowledge is that which is based on sense experience and positive
verification .
Epistemology
• 1. A branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human
knowledge.
•
2. Specialized the part of philosophy that is about the study of how we know things

5. Static Equilibrium
• For the sake of grasping the consequences of change and the nature of profit in a market economy the
economist constructs a fictitious system in which there is no change. Today is like yesterday and tomorrow
will be like today. There is no uncertainty about the future, and activity therefore does not involve risk. But
for the allowance to be made of interest, the sum of the prices of the complementary factors of production
exactly equals the price of the product, which means there is no room left for profit. But this fictitious
concept is not only unrealizable in actual life; it cannot even be consistently carried to its ultimate
conclusions. The individuals in this fictitious world would not act, they would not have to make choices,
they would just vegetate (to be passive or unthinking; to do nothing ). It is true that economics,
exactly because it cannot make experiments, is bound to apply this and other fictitious concepts of a
similar type. But its use should be restricted to the purposes which it is designed to serve. The purpose of
the concept of static equilibrium is the study of the nature of the relations between costs and prices and
thereby of profits. Outside of this it is inapplicable, and occupation with it vain.
• Now all that mathematics can do in the field of economic studies is to describe static equilibrium. The
equations and the indifference curves deal with a fictitious state of things, which never exists anywhere.
What they afford is a mathematical expression of the definition of static equilibrium. Because
mathematical economists start from the prejudice that economics has to be treated in mathematical terms
they consider the study of static equilibrium as the whole of economics.
• Occupation with static equilibrium is a misguided evasion .( an act or instance of escaping, avoiding, or
shirking something: evasion of one's duty) of the study of the main economic problems.
• The case is similar with the use of curves it is nothing more than a didactic
(academic) means of rendering the theory graphic and hence more easily
comprehensible.

6. Part 2
• The mathematical economist is prone to consider the price either as a measurement of value or
as equivalent to the commodity and In this sense we may say every transaction is for both parties
a "bargain."

7. Part 3
• Physicists do experiments to build up their thoery from the special to the more general ,from the concrete
to the more abstract.
• We have the knowledge of what goes on within acting men ,and the meaning attach to their actions.We
know uneasiness is the ultimate incentive of changing conditions of human lives.
• The radical difference between the social science and the natural science is –natural science possible is the
power to experiment ,social science have the power to grasp or to comprehend the meaning of human
action.
• We have to distinguish the meaning of action :we conceive and we understand..We conceive the meaning
of an action is the object of the theoretical science of human action by deductive system,which including
economic science .We consider it as a purposeful endeavor to reach some goal ,and we do not regard the
quality of the ends proposed and of the meanings applied.
• Our experience of human action and social life is predicated on praxeological and ecnomic theory.The pure
fact that set aside the epistemological question is open to different interpretations ,which elucidation by the
theoretical insight.
• Compare the technique of dealing with experience in the social science with that in the natural science is
instructive.Social science verify the theory developed by an appeal to the fact.Natural science builds up
theory in using experimentally established facts.
• We have to inquire whether the special conditons of action which have implyed in our reasoning
correspond to those we find in the segment of reality under consideration..

8. Part 4
• We not only need to conceive the meaning of human action in theories , but also need to understand the
meaning of human being.
• In the specific method of historical research is understanding the meaning of action. Historian has two
methods to establish facts: both by theoretical sciences and by the natural sciences. Furthermore, historian
will study the individual and unique conditions of the case in question. But the specific understanding
cannot be separated from the philosophy of the interpreter.
• In the field of specific understanding, the degree of scientific objectivity can be reached in natural sciences,
but cannot be reached in aprioristic sciences of logic and praxeology. History just can be rewritten. History
cannot be representated in new way.
• The author said that historical sciences are not purely rational, we may give an explanation of something
irrational, but it should never be abused for the purpose.
• It is not the task of history to reproduce the past. History is a representation of the past in terms of
concepts. The specific concepts of historical research are type concept. Classification is valid in a logical
sense if all the elements untied in one class are characterized by a common feature. Classes don’t exist
actually, they are always a product of mind which in observing things discovers likenesses and differences.
The same things have different classification. The understanding decides upon the classification, not the
classification decides upon the understanding.
• The type-concepts of historical or moral sciences ought not to be confused with the praxeological concept.

9. Part 5
• There is a radical difference between the methods of social sciences and of natural sciences.
• It is a fallacy to recommend to the social sciences the use of mathematics and to believe that they could in
this way be made more “exact”. But it is different with praxeological propositions, these refer with all
their exactitude and certainty to the reality of human action. Both the science of human action and human
action itself have a common root——human reason.