Works Cited
"What preserved me from developing an acute sense of inferiority in the company of those more efficient scholars was that I knew I owed whatever worthwhile new ideas I ever had to not possessing their capacity, i.e. to often not being able to remember what any competent specialist is supposed to have at his fingertips. Whenever I saw a new light on something it was as the result of a painful effort to reconstruct an argument which most competent economists would effortlessly and instantly reproduce.
What, then, does my knowledge consist of on which I base my claim to be a trained economist? Certainly not in the distinct recollection of particular statements or arguments. I generally will not be able to reproduce the contents of a book I have read or a lecture I have heard on my subject. But I have certainly often greatly profited from such books or lectures, of the contents of which I could not possibly give an account even immediately after I had read or heard them. In fact the attempt to remember what the writer or speaker had said would have deprived me of most of the benefit of the exposition, at least so far as it was on a topic on which I already had some knowledge. Even as a student I soon gave up all attempts to take notes of lectures-as soon as I tried I ceased to understand. My gain from hearing or reading what other people thought was that it changed, as it were, the colours of my own concepts. What I heard or read did not enable me to reproduce their thought but altered my thought. I would not retain their ideas or concepts but modify the relations between my own.
The results of this manner of absorbing ideas is best described by comparing it to the somewhat blurred outlines of a composite photograph: that is, the results of superimposing prints of different faces which at one time were popular as a means of bringing out the common features of a type or a race. There is nothing very precise about such a picture of the world. But it provides a map or a framework in which one has to discover one's own path rather than being able to follow a rigidly established one. What my sources give me are not definite pieces of knowledge which I can put together, but some modification of an already existing structure inside of which I have to find a way by observing all sorts of warning posts.
Alfred North Whitehead is quoted as saying that 'muddle-headedness is a condition precedent to independent thought'. That is certainly my experience. It was because I did not remember the answers that to others may have been obvious that I was often forced to think out a solution to a problem which did not exist for those who had a more orderly mind. That the existence of this sort of knowledge is not wholly unfamiliar is shown by the only half-joking description of an educated person as one who has forgotten a great deal. Such submerged memories may be quite important guidelines of judgment.
I am inclined to call minds of this type 'puzzlers'. But I shall not mind if they are called the muddlers, since they certainly will often give this impression if they talk about a subject before they have painfully worked through to some degree of clarity.
Their constant difficulties, which in rare instances may be rewarded by a new insight, are due to the fact that they cannot avail themselves of the established verbal formulae or arguments which lead others smoothly and quickly to the result. But being forced to find their own way of expressing an accepted idea, they sometimes discover that the conventional formula conceals gaps or unjustified tacit presuppositions. They will be forced to explicitly answer questions which had long been effectively evaded by a plausible but ambiguous turn of phrase or an implicit but illegitimate assumption.
People whose minds work that way seem clearly to rely in some measure on a process of wordless thought, something the existence of which is occasionally denied but which at least bilingual persons seem to me often to possess. To 'see' certain connections distinctly does not yet mean for them that they know how to describe them in words. Even after long endeavour to find the right form of words they may still be acutely aware that the expression adopted does not fully convey what they really mean. They also show another somewhat curious feature which I believe is not rare but which I have never seen described: that many of their particular ideas in different fields may spring from some single more general conception of which they are themselves not aware but which, like the similarity of their approach to the separate issues, they may much later discover with surprise."
-Friedrich Hayek, "Two Types of Mind"
What, then, does my knowledge consist of on which I base my claim to be a trained economist? Certainly not in the distinct recollection of particular statements or arguments. I generally will not be able to reproduce the contents of a book I have read or a lecture I have heard on my subject. But I have certainly often greatly profited from such books or lectures, of the contents of which I could not possibly give an account even immediately after I had read or heard them. In fact the attempt to remember what the writer or speaker had said would have deprived me of most of the benefit of the exposition, at least so far as it was on a topic on which I already had some knowledge. Even as a student I soon gave up all attempts to take notes of lectures-as soon as I tried I ceased to understand. My gain from hearing or reading what other people thought was that it changed, as it were, the colours of my own concepts. What I heard or read did not enable me to reproduce their thought but altered my thought. I would not retain their ideas or concepts but modify the relations between my own.
The results of this manner of absorbing ideas is best described by comparing it to the somewhat blurred outlines of a composite photograph: that is, the results of superimposing prints of different faces which at one time were popular as a means of bringing out the common features of a type or a race. There is nothing very precise about such a picture of the world. But it provides a map or a framework in which one has to discover one's own path rather than being able to follow a rigidly established one. What my sources give me are not definite pieces of knowledge which I can put together, but some modification of an already existing structure inside of which I have to find a way by observing all sorts of warning posts.
Alfred North Whitehead is quoted as saying that 'muddle-headedness is a condition precedent to independent thought'. That is certainly my experience. It was because I did not remember the answers that to others may have been obvious that I was often forced to think out a solution to a problem which did not exist for those who had a more orderly mind. That the existence of this sort of knowledge is not wholly unfamiliar is shown by the only half-joking description of an educated person as one who has forgotten a great deal. Such submerged memories may be quite important guidelines of judgment.
I am inclined to call minds of this type 'puzzlers'. But I shall not mind if they are called the muddlers, since they certainly will often give this impression if they talk about a subject before they have painfully worked through to some degree of clarity.
Their constant difficulties, which in rare instances may be rewarded by a new insight, are due to the fact that they cannot avail themselves of the established verbal formulae or arguments which lead others smoothly and quickly to the result. But being forced to find their own way of expressing an accepted idea, they sometimes discover that the conventional formula conceals gaps or unjustified tacit presuppositions. They will be forced to explicitly answer questions which had long been effectively evaded by a plausible but ambiguous turn of phrase or an implicit but illegitimate assumption.
People whose minds work that way seem clearly to rely in some measure on a process of wordless thought, something the existence of which is occasionally denied but which at least bilingual persons seem to me often to possess. To 'see' certain connections distinctly does not yet mean for them that they know how to describe them in words. Even after long endeavour to find the right form of words they may still be acutely aware that the expression adopted does not fully convey what they really mean. They also show another somewhat curious feature which I believe is not rare but which I have never seen described: that many of their particular ideas in different fields may spring from some single more general conception of which they are themselves not aware but which, like the similarity of their approach to the separate issues, they may much later discover with surprise."
-Friedrich Hayek, "Two Types of Mind"