Pat Gunning wrote: >Hmmmmmm. Religious economics? Perhaps it can >find a haven within heterodox economics? > >It is difficult for me to make sense of the >notion that there is some special branch of >economics called "religious economics." You are correct, because there is no "special" branch of economics that is "religious." Rather all of economics is religious, in that all economics terminates in terms that cannot be resolved from within economics itself. When one speaks of a "free market," one is already in the middle of a theological discussion on the nature of freedom; when one speaks of "the perfect system of natural liberty," then one is confronted with the questions of what constitutes a "nature," where its liberty might lie, and what will provide for its perfection. These are questions that must be referred to a higher science. This is, of course, the nature of all sciences. All branches of science must conform themselves to the higher branch in the order of the sciences. The biologist, for example, must conform his findings to chemistry, the chemist to physics, and the physicist to mathematics. That's simply the way science works. A science that recognized no higher science would simply be circular and unable to norm itself to any standard of truth, since the standard of truth must always be supplied by the higher science. All science is "normative," in that it depends for a higher science for its norms, and positive, in that it conforms itself to its own proper subject matter and methodology. John Medaille