THERE are two main branches of the sciences of human action: praxeology and history.
History is the collection and systematic arrangement of all the data of experience concerning human action. It deals with the concrete content of human action. It studies all human endeavors in their infinite multiplicity and variety and all individual actions with all their accidental, special, and particular implications. It scrutinizes the ideas guiding acting men and the outcome of the actions performed. It embraces every aspect of human activities. It is on the one hand general history and on the other hand the history of various narrower fields. There is the history of political and military action, of ideas and philosophy, of economic activities, of technology, of literature, art, and science, of religion, of mores and customs, and of many other realms of human life. There is ethnology and anthropology, as far as they are not a part of biology, and there is psychology as far as it is neither physiology nor epistemology nor philosophy. There is linguistics as far as it is neither logic nor the physiology of speech.
The subject matter of all historical sciences is the past. They cannot teach us anything which would be valid for all human actions, that is, for the future too. The study of history makes a man wise and judicious. But it does not by itself provide any knowledge and skill which could be utilized for handling concrete tasks.
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Is he saying that psychology is a historical discipline? Why or why not?
I think so, but might want to contemplate it a bit. Isn’t this before he employed the term “thymology” and distinguished it from the mainstream usage of “psychology”?
[quote=“From the preface of the third revised edition of “Human Action””]
Two terminological remarks may be in order.
[…]
Secondly, in the last decades the meaning of the term “psychology” has been more and more restricted to the field of experimental psychology, a discipline that resorts to the research methods of the natural sciences. On the other hand, it has become usual to dismiss those studies that previously had been called psychological as “literary psychology” and as an unscientific way of reasoning. Whenever reference is made to “psychology” in economic studies, one has in mind precisely this literary psychology, and therefore it seems advisable to introduce a special term for it. I suggested in my book Theory and History (New Haven, 1957, pp. 264-274) the term “thymology,” and I used this term also in my recently published essay The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (Princeton, 1962). However, my suggestion was not meant to be retroactive and to alter the use of the term “psychology” in books previously published, and so I continue in this new edition to use the term “psychology” in the same way I used it in the first edition.
Maybe, but I’m not sure about this case. He’s using “History” in a very broad sense, the study of anything ever done by humans. So that would include psychology.
Actually, you are wrong Giles, and everyone familiar with you know that happens quite often. This is thymology in practice. I’ve become familiar with your character, and am thus able to better anticipate your behavior.
What I want to know is, if that is what he meant, why did he say it, what was his reasoning? Of course, it is easy to just dismiss it that quickly; but Mises, I think, is one who deserves much more scrutiny than that.
Here is the full section the original quote is from. I’ve never even seen the German book that was the basis for HA but I am willing to bet that the term he used for this type of “historical understanding” when he is using the word understanding is Verstehen. This is part of a relevant passage from Rothbard’s Individualism and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences which I quoted here:
Perhaps I am wrong, it’s quite possible, I’ve been wrong before and no doubt I’ll be wrong again. But as far as I can tell I’m just taking heed of Hayek’s point that the pure theory of choice can only get us so far, in order to understand social phenomena we must take into account the ways that knowledge is transmitted and received through the economy. As far as I can tell this means including psychology into economics proper, as has been done in fields such as behavioural economics and other related disciplines.
I have to run now, but I would say that it is sort of an Economics in One Lesson for general Austrian methodology. Parts of it are in other essays and part is unique. Also, one whole section oddly repeats itself. Maybe if we do some voodoo around our Mises busts a copy will materialize.