Private Property and Collective Security

Philosophy has fathered a number of other sciences. It is, as we all know, the father of physics which used to be known as natural philosophy. And no one is ignorant of the fact that economics was launched by a moralist whose name was Adam Smith. Nor should this be really surprising when we reflect on the fact that the most general notions in all these sciences are basically philosophical and that the methods of unfolding their implications are basically philosophical. There is, of course, the problem of determining whether there is any thing in reality which corresponds to the notions whose depths we attempt to plumb. In general the answer to this problem is not given to us by philosophical methods; it is given to us by observation.

Volume 2, Number 3; Autumn 1966