E. Roy Weintraub wrote:  
 > Ex cathedra pontifications by historians of   
economics about the proper role of axioms in science,  
  
It seems to me that merely looking up the word in   
the dictionary is sufficient to rescue anybody   
from a charge of mere "pontification." The   
dictionary use, however, does not exclude the   
same term being used in analogous senses in   
specific fields.  Nor is it my place to contend   
with von Neuman, who operates in an intellectual   
space 10 orders of magnitude, at least, above my   
own, and who is one of the authentic geniuses of   
the 20th century. Yet I very much suspect that   
his system of axioms is not arbitrary, but   
something that can easily be accepted by those   
who work in those rarefied spaces, thus   
preserving the analogous sense of axiom. Even in   
philosophy, something generally accepted can be   
treated as an axiom, but this is somewhat   
dangerous, since such things as slavery and the   
inferiority of women have, at times, been taken   
for axioms of social thought. Such axioms must   
always be open to examination and revision.  
  
Far more useful to this discussion would be an   
explication of the necessary and sufficient   
conditions to treat an economic postulate as an axiom.  
  
  
John C. Medaille