Friedrich August von Hayek, often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian-British intellectual who made contributions to economics, political science, psychology, intellectual history, philosophy and other fields. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for work on money and economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena. His account of how prices communicate information is widely regarded as an important contribution to economics that led to him receiving the prize.
Sir Karl Raimund Popper was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. According to Popper, a theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can be scrutinised with decisive experiments. Popper was opposed to the classical justificationist account of knowledge, which he replaced with critical rationalism, namely "the first non-justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy".
Leo Strauss was a German-American scholar of political philosophy who specialized in classical political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books.
The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is an international organization composed of economists, philosophers, historians, intellectuals and business leaders. The members see the MPS as an effort to interpret in modern terms the fundamental principles of economic society as expressed by classical Western economists, political scientists and philosophers. Its founders included Friedrich Hayek, Frank Knight, Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler and Milton Friedman. The society advocates freedom of expression, free market economic policies and the political values of an open society. Further, the society seeks to discover ways in which the private sector can replace many functions currently provided by government entities.
Spontaneous order, also named self-organization in the hard sciences, is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos. The term "self-organization" is more often used for physical changes and biological processes, while "spontaneous order" is typically used to describe the emergence of various kinds of social orders in human social networks from the behavior of a combination of self-interested individuals who are not intentionally trying to create order through planning. Proposed examples of systems which evolved through spontaneous order or self-organization include the evolution of life on Earth, language, crystal structure, the Internet, Wikipedia, and a free market economy.
John Nicholas Gray is an English political philosopher and author with interests in analytic philosophy, the history of ideas, and philosophical pessimism. He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer. He is an atheist.
William Warren Bartley III, known as W. W. Bartley III, was an American philosopher specializing in 20th century philosophy, language and logic, and the Vienna Circle.
Discourse ethics refers to a type of argument that attempts to establish normative or ethical truths by examining the presuppositions of discourse. The ethical theory originated with German philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, and variations have been used by Frank Van Dun and Habermas' student Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning a posteriori facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience. Other ways of knowing, such as theology, metaphysics, intuition, or introspection, are rejected or considered meaningless.
James R. Otteson is an American philosopher and political economist. He is the John T. Ryan Jr. Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Notre Dame. Formerly, he was the Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics, Professor of Economics, and executive director of the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University. He is also a Senior Scholar at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C., a Research Professor in the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom and in the Philosophy Department at the University of Arizona, a Visitor of Ralston College, a Research Fellow for the Independent Institute in California, a director of Ethics and Economics Education of New England, and a Senior Scholar at the Fraser Institute. He has taught previously at Yeshiva University, New York University, Georgetown University, and the University of Alabama.
In science studies, boundary-work comprises instances in which boundaries, demarcations, or other divisions between fields of knowledge are created, advocated, attacked, or reinforced. Such delineations often have high stakes involved for the participants, and carries with it the implication that such boundaries are flexible and socially constructed.
Peter Joseph Boettke is an American economist of the Austrian School. He is currently a professor of economics and philosophy at George Mason University; the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, vice president for research, and director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at GMU.
Criticism of Marxism has come from various political ideologies and academic disciplines. This includes general intellectual criticism about dogmatism, a lack of internal consistency, criticism related to materialism, arguments that Marxism is a type of historical determinism or that it necessitates a suppression of individual rights, issues with the implementation of communism and economic issues such as the distortion or absence of price signals and reduced incentives. In addition, empirical and epistemological problems are frequently identified.
Jeremy Jennings is an English political theorist and professor of political theory at King's College London. He is predominantly interested in the history of political thought, often with specific reference to France. He has authored a number of books on political topics, including the works of Georges Sorel, syndicalism and socialism. He became the founding editor of the European Journal of Political Theory. His other interests include political ideology and contemporary political theory. Jennings has been employed by the universities of Swansea and then Birmingham.
John Worrall is a professor of philosophy of science at the London School of Economics. He is also associated with the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the same institution.
Donald A. Gillies is a British philosopher and historian of science and mathematics. He is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London.
Bruce J. Caldwell is an American historian of economics, Research Professor of Economics at Duke University, and Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy. Prior to holding this position, Caldwell was the Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In 1979, he received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and did post-doctoral work at New York University, where he was influenced by both Ludwig Lachmann and Israel Kirzner.
John William Nevill Watkins was an English philosopher, a professor at the London School of Economics from 1966 until his retirement in 1989 and a prominent proponent of critical rationalism.
Ronald Hamowy was a Canadian academic, known primarily for his contributions to political and social academic fields. At the time of his death, he was professor emeritus of Intellectual History at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Hamowy was closely associated with the political ideology of libertarianism and his writings and scholarship place particular emphasis on individual liberty and the limits of state action in a free society. He is associated with a number of prominent American libertarian organizations.
Mario J. Rizzo is an American economist of the Austrian School. He serves as an Associate Professor of Economics at New York University.
