Praxeology - Origin and Etymology

Origin and Etymology

The neologism praxeology (Gr. praxis (πρᾶξις), action, and logos (λόγος), talk, speech) is often credited to Louis Bourdeau, the French author of a classification of the sciences, which he published in his Théorie des sciences: Plan de Science intégrale in 1882:

On account of their dual natures of specialty and generality, these functions should be the subject of a separate science. Some of its parts have been studied for a long time, because this kind of research, in which man could be the main subject, has always presented the greatest interest. Physiology, hygiene, medicine, psychology, animal history, human history, political economy, morality, etc. represent fragments of a science that we would like to establish, but as fragments scattered and uncoordinated have remained until now only parts of particular sciences. They should be joined together and made whole in order to highlight the order of the whole and its unity. Now you have a science, so far unnamed, which we propose to call Praxeology (from πραξις, action), or by referring to the influence of the environment, Mesology (from μεơος, environment).

The term, however, was in use with differing interpretations as far back as 1608, by Clemens Timpler in his Philosophiae practicae systema methodicum. In this work, Timpler, when examining ethics, goes on to say:

The general ethics falls into two parts: 1) Aretologie and 2) Praxiologie, i.e., of virtue and of their action.... This distinction between the moral actions of the virtues seems a novelty; but it's necessary, however, because the habit of virtue and the move to action do not coincide.

It was later mentioned by Robert Flint in 1904. The popular definition of this word was first given by Alfred V. Espinas (1844–1922), the French philosopher and sociologist and the forerunner of the modern Polish school of the science of efficient action. The Austro-American school of economics was also based on a philosophical science of the same kind.

In the slightly different spelling, praxiology, the word was used by the English psychologist Charles A. Mercier (in 1911), and then proposed by Knight Dunlap to John B. Watson as a better name for his behaviorism. It was rejected by Watson, but was accepted by the Chinese physiologist of behavior, Zing-Yang Kuo (b. 1898) in 1935, and mentioned by William McDougall (in 1928, and later).

Previously the word praxiology, with the meaning Espinas gave to it, was used by Tadeusz Kotarbiński (in 1923) and some time later by several economists, such as the Ukrainian, Eugene Slutsky (1926) in his attempt to base economics on a theory of action, the Austrian Ludwig von Mises (1933), the Russian, Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938) during the Second International Congress of History of Science and Technology in London (in 1931), and the Pole, Oscar Lange (1904–1965) in 1959, and later.

The Sicilian philosopher, Carmelo Ottaviano, was using the Italianised version, prassiologia, in his treatises starting from 1935, but in his own way, as a theory of politics. After the Second World War the use of the term praxeology spread widely. After the emigration of von Mises to America his pupil Murray Rothbard defended the praxeological approach. A revival of Espinas's approach in France was revealed in the works of Pierre Massé (1946), the eminent cybernetician, Georges Théodule Guilbaud (1953), the Belgian logician, Leo Apostel (1957), the cybernetician, Anatol Rapoport (1962), Henry Pierron, psychologist and lexicographer (1957), François Perroux, economist (1957), the social psychologist, Robert Daval (1963), the well-known sociologist, Raymond Aron (1963) and the methodologists, Abraham Antoine Moles and Roland Caude (1965).

Under the influence of Tadeusz Kotarbiński, praxeology flourished in Poland. A special 'Centre of Praxeology' (Zaklad Prakseologiczny) was created under the organizational guidance of the Polish Academy of Sciences, with its own periodical (from 1962), called at first Materiały Prakseologiczne (Praxeological Papers), and then abbreviated to Prakseologia. It published hundreds of papers by different authors, and the materials for a special vocabulary edited by Professor Tadeusz Pszczolowski, the leading praxeologist of the younger generation. A sweeping survey of the praxeological approach is to be found in the paper by the French statistician, Micheline Petruszewycz, A propos de la praxéologie.

Ludwig von Mises was influenced by several theories in forming his work on praxeology, including Immanuel Kant's works, Max Weber's work on methodological individualism, and Carl Menger's development of the subjective theory of value.

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