You Cannot Convict Your Opponent Of Error; Y'all Tin Dismiss Alone Convince Him Of It

Those of us who write close economic science tin alone nod knowingly at a comment from John Maynard Keynes inward 1934, inward a a fragment of writing that was in all likelihood work of a draft of the preface for the General Theory. He wrote:

"[A]n economical author requires from his reader much goodwill too news too a large stair out of co-operation ... In economic science you lot cannot convict your opponent of error; you lot tin only convince him of it." 

Happy New Year. And thank you lot to all the regular, semi-regular, occasional, too one-time readers for your goodwill, intelligence, cooperation--and for taking a await at this spider web log instantly too then. I published this same quotation a twelvemonth agone on New Year's Day, but it silent echoed inward my hear this year.

The quotation from Keynes appears inward book XIII of the Collected Works of John Maynard Keynes, edited yesteryear Donald Moggridge too published inward 1973 (pp. 469-471). Here's a fuller quotation from the passage, both worth reading for itself, too too to give approximately context:

When nosotros write economical theory, nosotros write inward a quasi-formal style; too at that spot tin live on no doubt, inward spite of the disadvantages, that this is our best available agency of conveying our thoughts to i another. But when an economist writes inward a quasi-formal style, he is composing neither a document verbally consummate too exact so equally to live on capable of a strict legal interpretation, nor a logically consummate proof. Whilst it is his duty to brand his premises too his work of price equally clear equally he can, he never states all his premises too his definitions are non perfectly clear-cut. He never mentions all the qualifications necessary to his conclusions. He has no agency of stating, in i lawsuit too for all, the precise marking of abstraction on which he is moving, too he does non motion on the same marking all the time. It is, I think, of the essential nature of economical exposition that it gives, non a consummate statement, which, fifty-fifty if it were possible, would live on prolix too complicated to the dot of obscurity but a sample statement, so to speak, out of all the things which could live on said, intended to advise to the reader the whole parcel of associated ideas, so that, if he catches the bundle, he volition non inward the to the lowest degree live on confused or impeded yesteryear the technical incompleteness of the mere words which the author has written down, taken yesteryear themselves. 

This means, on the i hand, that an economical author requires from his reader much goodwill too news too a large stair out of co-operation; and, on the other hand, that at that spot are a M futile, yet verbally legitimate, objections which an objector tin raise. In economic science you lot cannot convict your opponent of error; you lot tin only convince him of it. And, fifty-fifty if you lot are right, you lot cannot convince him, if at that spot is a defect inward your ain powers of sentiment too exposition or if his caput is already so filled amongst opposite notions that he cannot select handgrip of the clues to your thought which are trying to throw to him. 

The results is that much criticism, which has verbal justification inward what the author has written, is withal altogether futile too maddeningly irritating; for it only indicates that the minds of authors too reader get got failed to meet. ....

I inquire forgiveness, therefore, if I get got failed inward the necessary goodwill too intellectual sympathy when I criticise; too to those minds to which, for any reasons, my ideas create non discovery an slow entry, I offering the assurance inward advance that they volition non discovery it difficult, where the province to live on traversed is so extensive too complicated, to discovery reasons which volition seem to them adequate, for refusing to follow. Time rather than contention ... volition variety out the truthful from the false.