This volume had its origin in a desire on the part of Joop Klant's colleagues at the University of Amsterdam to mark his retirement from the Chair of History and Philosophy of Economics. That desire translated into an attempt to focus scholarly effort on some of the themes that have informed his work over the past quarter-century.

Those themes are clearly evident in his own chapter, “The Natural Order,” and are also spelled out in his contribution to the Discussion. They have to do with the nature of economics and with certain implications for being an honest practitioner in that discipline. First of all, economics is not value-free. That means that the choices we make about theories and policies in economics inevitably reflect our preferred notions of how the world is constituted. Furthermore, because we do not have natural constants in the world of economics and because our theory in economics is often so general (for instance, “agents optimize”) that only specific versions can be tested, this leaves the basic theories themselves immune to test results. In our efforts at self-criticism, therefore, we have to go beyond mere testing for falsifying instances. This does not mean that striving after falsifiable theory is unimportant. It does mean that we must acknowledge and identify, as far as possible, the role of “vision” (perceived natural order) and art–the art of the good practitioner–in our economic “science.”