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Jazz and freedom

I’ve always thought that there is a conceptual link between spontaneous order (in the Hayek sense), conversation (in the Oakeshottian sense) and jazz. Here is a small squib from a libertarian blog that makes such a link though I’m not a libertarian as such. conversatifreedomJazzMichael OakeshottSpontaneous order

Morals and markets

Sandel plugging his latest. The journalist’s quote below has much resonance to me. Even to a toddler’s mind, the logic of the transaction was evidently clear – if he had to be bribed, then the potty couldn’t be a good idea – and within a week he had grown so suspicious and upset that we…

Science, the Market and Iterative Knowledge

The second paper co-authored with Dave Hardwick has now been published in Studies in Emergent Order: Abstract: In a recent paper (Hardwick & Marsh, in press) we examine the recent tensions between the two broadly successful spontaneous orders, namely the Market and Science. We argued for an epistemic pluralism, the view that freedom and liberty…

Clash of the Titans: When the Market and Science Collide

Coming soon the first of three papers I’ve co-authored with Dave Hardwick, this one due in Advances in Austrian Economics, Vol. 17 ABSTRACT Purpose/problem statement – The two most successful complex adaptive systems are the Market and Science, each with an inherent tendency toward epistemic imperialism. Of late, science, notably medical science, seems to have…

Beyond Complexity: Can The Sensory Order Defend the Liberal Self?

My chum Chor-yung Cheung who like myself is both an Oakeshottian and a Hayekian introduces his paper below: Friedrich Hayek’s social philosophy is one of the most systematic and sophisticated among the contributions made by 20th-century liberal thinkers. His defense of the free market and individual freedom and his critique of collectivism of various kinds are…

Rationalism in Politics

In anticipation of a talk I’m giving later on in the week on Oakeshott’s so-called “dispositional conservatism”, here is a nice little piece by my chum Gene Callahan serving as a good introduction to RIP. The British philosopher and historian Michael Oakeshott is a curious figure in twentieth-century intellectual history. He is known mostly as…