Economics as a science

The first four of these essays originated in a seminar which I gave in the summer of 1968 at the University of Colorado to a group of teachers, most of them from high schools, in an experienced-teacher program. The fifth, sixth, and seventh essays were added subsequently, the sixth essay being a slightly revised version of my Presidential Ad dress to the American Economic Association in December, 1968.

The main purpose of these essays is to introduce those who already have some acquaintance with economics to what might be called the larger scientific background of the subject. The seminar out of which these essays grew was motivated by the feeling that, especially for those who were going back to teach economics in the schools, a feeling for the significance and the background of the discipline was even more important than the acquisition of specific analytical techniques. The trees of the economic forest are so intriguing that it is all too easy not see the wood. These essays are intended to give the reader not only a certain feeling for the little wood that is economics but for the larger landscape in which the wood is set. Nobody will become an economist merely by reading these essays.