Pat Gunning writes: "... to define anything, we must imagine the thing without one or more of the attributes that we employ in our definition. What we imagine is, to Mises, an imaginary construction. This is all that Mises means by an imaginary construction. It is also what he has in mind when he says that economics and praxeology cannot do without imaginary constructions. He applies this general idea to what he calls praxeological phenomena -- phenomena related to what he calls action. The method of imaginary constructions is a means of reaching an understanding of a specific case of economic interaction by conceiving of the interaction in the absence of some characteristic that we use to define it." Whew. To the extent I understand the above, it was effectively opposed by Francis Bacon, in Novum Organum, who wrote: "Man ... can understand ... so much only as he has observed ... of the course of nature." "One method of delivery (from error) alone remains to us; which is simply this: we must lead men to the particulars themselves; and their series and order; while men on their side must force themselves for awhile to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts." Many regard Bacon's attitude as a vital ingredient in the progress of science. Thus Milton Friedman became viewed as outstanding not mainly by recycling ancient views from Nassau Senior et al., but by persuading people (with a little help from Anna Schwartz) that the Great Depression did not spring from endogenous faults of the market economy. He did this by documenting blundering and bad timing by leaders of the Federal Reserve System, which could be seen as exogenous. I disagree, but that means nothing when so many powerful and heavily subsidized pundits seized on his views. And so it came to pass that the recycled prejudices of Nassau Senior et al. came to be labeled as "monetarism", and imposed on much of the world. As we work out from under this handicap, which now has alienated much of the world, we would do well to focus on facts. Mason Gaffney