Re: quick question

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

I asked: 
> are you disagreeing? what _are_ you saying? why should we 
> agree with these
> people?

Ian: 
> What does it mean to say they were mercantilists if that is merely one
> form of ex post description amongst possible others [and no I'm not
> providing a cluster of counterfactuals to serve as the basis for a
> different narrative]? 

It means that I think that one theory (that there is something called "mercantilism" which describes shared characteristics of pre-19th century Western European state economic policies) works in the sense that it allows more understanding of the phenomena than simply avoiding theory altogether (which is impossible, anyway). If there are better theories, I'd like to hear of them.   

>Whose description trumps given Quine-Duhem?

I don't know what their theory of mercantilism is. My understanding is that they were both philosophers of science, not social scientists, so I doubt that they wrote anything about mercantilism. 

In any event, what is meant by "trumping" Quine-Dumen? I'm not interested in "trumping" a philosophy of science but instead in getting a better understanding of empirical reality (until an even better one comes along). 

Jim