Economic and Social Science

Abstract

The moment of conception sets genetic predispositions and, thereafter, human knowledge is derived from an interactive sequence of action, experience, interpretation and response. That first-hand knowledge is supplemented by the human skills of language and communication, which allow information to be acquired from secondary sources. Cultural conditioning begins as and when institutional norms and patterns of social relationships are impressed upon the mind.

While thinkers like Hume and Adam Smith had seen the problem for man as scarcity of goods, and the remedy in rules of justice and the division of labour, for Hayek the main problem is to know how to act in a complex environment only part of which any mind can comprehend.

(Kukathas, 1989, p. 54)