Economics and the Idea of Natural Laws

Abstract

I. Dubious notions suggested by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conceptions of the “laws of nature” are being discarded from natural sciences, and should be discarded from economics, 1. — II. Evolution of the idea of natural laws, since the seventeenth century; in the natural sciences, “mechanical philosophy,” belief in harmonious Order of Nature, fatalism, and the modern view that scientific laws may be only statistical laws, 6. — III. Corresponding evolution in economic thought. Eighteenth-century moral sciences mechanistic, but not rigidly deterministic. Economic optimism and fatalism. Modern view of the nature of economic laws, 16. — IV. Economic tendencies are toward adjustment, but not necessarily any ideal adjustment. Social welfare depends on human motives and on institutions. This was recognized in eighteenth-century philosophy of the moral “Law of Nature” (jus Naturae), accepted by Physiocrats and Adam Smith, 34.