Dear John
I confess that my writing may appear to show arrogance. But be assured that I am not an Austrian.  Please blame me, and not the Austrians, for my misbehavior.
 
Arrogance and the progress of science:
Readers familiar with Thomas Kuhn?s scheme of narrating the history of progress of science may take the following position. A scientific community adopts a set of core beliefs. Those core beliefs together constitute a paradigm. Normal science is a phase when scientists add something to the stock of existing knowledge within the paradigm. A crisis appears when there are great many issues that the existing paradigm cannot resolve. A new paradigm may then bring in new core articles of faith with which the crisis is resolved. The new paradigm must reject certain core articles of the old paradigm. That constitutes a scientific revolution. 
 
People who have invested a life time of dedicated work within the prevailing paradigm are generally unlikely to accept the new paradigm. That is where Einstein?s quip kicks in: progress of science is possible because old men die. While the ?old guards? who worked within the prevailing paradigm would not accept the new paradigm, the new generations will. The new generations have no investments in the existing stock of knowledge, and once they see basic flaws in the existing stock, they are not eager to take this as inheritance either. They want to invest in exploration of the new avenues.
 
A new paradigm must seem arrogant to the adherents of the old paradigm. For example, the pre-Copernican world accepted the idea that if a statement is universally confirmed by experience, than that statement is true. Thus if everybody sees that the earth is lying still, then the statement ?the earth is lying still? is true. But Copernicus challenges this belief. To him, even if everybody confirms an experience, it is not a basis of truth, because everybody is subject to illusion. The earth is not still, but they all see it to be still in universal error of observation. To arrive at the truth, one must resort to valid mathematics and logic to explain the facts. The idea that universal testimony is not a basis of truth was not just arrogant, it was revolting. And yet Copernicus ultimately won.
Dear John, by a supreme paradox, I have discovered the obvious that was always ignored. I begin with the statement: the buyer pays the seller, and deduce inescapable logical implications, all of which are also obvious. I have unified all economics with one single equation (the buyer pays the seller): micro, macro, trade, money, development, demography all are neatly and more completely dealt with the same equation (by merely changing the conditions under which the equation works.) 
 
I have found that new students embrace my presentation with an eagerness bordering on mania, at the same time as the old guards of my acquaintance abandon me with an eagerness bordering on phobia.
 
But I have no fear.  Occam?s razor is my rescuer.  The human brain automatically forgets a more complex explanation if a simpler alternative is available. 
 
Mohammad Gani