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    The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics
    The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics
    The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics
    Ebook71 pages1 hour

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

    By Vernon Smith

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    Religious and non-religious people alike commonly assert that religion and science occupy two entirely separate and distinct realms. There can be, it is said, neither conflict nor concourse between them. But what if science and religion share something deeply mysterious in common? What if that mysterious commonality is faith?

    In this short but provocative collection, the eminent economist Vernon L. Smith explores the spooky aspects of contemporary science and uncovers the faith and mystery at the root of scientific inquiry. Through his lecture delivered at the Acton Institute’s annual conference in 2016, and in conversations with other scholars on the lecture’s themes, Smith reflects on the history of physics and economics, and the discoveries of quantum theory and experimental economics—all with a view toward the convergence of religion and science in their dependence on the evidence of things not seen.

    Includes contributions by Lenore T. Ealy, Samuel Gregg, and Victor V. Claar

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherActon Institute
    Release dateDec 1, 2017
    ISBN9781942503705
    The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics

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      The Evidence of Things Not Seen - Vernon Smith

      Foreword

      Historically, a recurrent theme in economics is that the values to which people respond are not confined to those one would expect based on the narrowly defined canons of rationality.[1] With these words delivered in his 2002 Nobel Prize lecture, the economist Vernon L. Smith directly challenged the common perception that economics assumes that human choices are essentially driven by selfishness. But he also indicated that the power of the human intellect might be in fact more expansive than much of modernity is willing to concede.

      This message about the discipline famously labelled by Thomas Carlyle as the dismal science and about the everyday workings of free markets is one that more people need to hear. Careful reading of Smith’s Nobel Prize lecture and his many other writings demonstrates just how much he has incorporated ideas about what makes people tick from other fields, ranging from philosophy to psychology, into his study of economics. The overall effect has been to help economics better reflect human reality rather than an artificial homo economicus. Such work, however, is also indicative of Smith’s lifelong willingness to engage sources of knowledge outside his discipline, some of which may surprise those unfamiliar with his work.

      Among economists, Smith is known as one of the pioneers

      of the discipline of experimental economics. This involves

      laboratory-like experiments in which people are placed in a particular micro-economy in which they can engage in trade, but without knowing the conditions driving supply and demand in that micro-economy. Those running the experiments can thus test the validity of particular economic theories, thereby gaining greater knowledge of how economic exchanges actually work.

      Over time, experimental economics has established the importance of what Smith and others call economic institutions. Broadly speaking, there are the formal and informal rules (often called protocols) that shape economic life in a given society. Smith’s experiments have illustrated that economic institutions really do matter when it comes to shaping economic outcomes. Whether it is particular laws, regulations, customs, or property arrangements, any set of rules will affect (1) the information available to those in a given marketplace and (2) the incentives encouraging them to act in one way rather than another.

      Smith’s experiments have also provided considerable evidence that, as he wrote in a 1994 paper, economic agents can achieve efficient outcomes which are not part of their intention. Many will recognize this as one of the central claims of The Wealth of Nations, the book written by Smith’s famous namesake two and a half centuries ago. Interestingly, Adam Smith’s argument was not one that Vernon Smith had been inclined to accept before beginning his experimental research. As the latter went on to say in his 1994 paper, few outside of the Austrian and Chicago traditions believed it, circa 1956. Certainly I was not primed to believe it, having been raised by a socialist mother, and further handicapped (in this regard) by a Harvard education. Given, however, what his experiments revealed about what he called the error in my thinking, Smith changed his mind. Truth was what mattered—not ego or preexisting ideological commitments.[2]

      The Other Smith

      This, however, was not the limit of Vernon Smith’s engagement with the thought of Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment more generally. Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as Francis Hutcheson—a Presbyterian minister and the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow (which Adam Smith himself later held)—were immensely influential upon the American founding, but also crucial to the development of modern market economies that, when permitted to do so, have liberated millions from poverty.

      Though Vernon Smith is well versed in The Wealth of Nations, his writings emphasize the Scottish Enlightenment’s attentiveness to the variety of human motivations that shape economic action. He has lamented more than once that most economists are unfamiliar with Adam Smith’s other great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), a text that Smith revised no less than six times and regarded as his most important book.

      But what is especially important about the Scottish Enlightenment, from Vernon Smith’s standpoint, is how it stimulated thought about the nature of reason. There is a place, Smith argues, for what is called constructivist reason: the use of conscious deductive processes of human reason to establish social, political, and economic institutions. Drafting a constitution is one example of this. Political order does not arise spontaneously. Human deliberation, choice, and action is involved.

      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.

      Reason and Faith

      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, prominently represented by the great ‘shalt not’ prohibitions of the world’s leading religions.[3] In

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