Murray Rothbard Is The Ray Peat Of Economics

[michael94]

The US government always favors the rich and large defense companies and banks. That’s not libertarian.

I think many Americans secretly would be happy if porn drugs prostitution etc were legalized.

rothbard showed in Conceived in Liberty how the libertarian impulses were overturned from the getgo in a sort of coup engineered by Hamilton and his allies, against Jefferson’s ideals of very small government, no standing army, and states as countries not as wards of Washington.

Covid-19 is the next step in fascism. by the end of the year we may have mandatory tracking, mandatory vaccinations, digital money and requirement to comply with lots of new laws that kill personal freedom.

I am curious what would happen with mandatory vaccinations. I wouldnt consent to that and I know a lot of my neighbors wouldnt. There are ways of getting around it besides violence, like making an agreement with doctor that he vaccinated you ( even though they didnt ).

The gov doesnt really need martial law because the people are generally quite docile these days. Most adults are using an iphone/google android so mandatory tracking is hardly necessary either, sadly

 

[ecstatichamster]

Peat is a believer in crank economics such as Syndicalism.

Listen to rothbard lecture while you are home. He was such a master.

by the way, this crisis has created the fastest opportunity for the rich and powerful to get much richer and more powerful, something called modern monetary theory, which was quietly adopted in the last few weeks without any debate, it is a game changer.

 

[michael94]

Peat is a believer in crank economics such as Syndicalism.

Listen to rothbard lecture while you are home. He was such a master.

by the way, this crisis has created the fastest opportunity for the rich and powerful to get much richer and more powerful, something called modern monetary theory, which was quietly adopted in the last few weeks without any debate, it is a game changer.

A major problem is people throw around terms like democracy and fascism constantly without any clarity or purity of what they are fighting for. For example, someone will say they are in favor of democracy but make no mention of how the monetary system is constantly stealing purchasing power from productive americans and the government is overtaxing them. But its ok because its democratic.
Same with Fascism, if someone with government authority said that the central bank will no longer be privately manipulated and our currency will be back by the country's labor and resources, that would be "bad" because government man bad.

 

[ecstatichamster]

A major problem is people throw around terms like democracy and fascism constantly without any clarity or purity of what they are fighting for. For example, someone will say they are in favor of democracy but make no mention of how the monetary system is constantly stealing purchasing power from productive americans and the government is overtaxing them. But its ok because its democratic.
Same with Fascism, if someone with government authority said that the central bank will no longer be privately manipulated and our currency will be back by the country's labor and resources, that would be "bad" because government man bad.

Democracy is the worst form of government. The reason they teach it is to make it a religion in kids when they are easily molded by government employee teachers.

There is really no advantage to it over the divine right of kings which actually makes more sense than rule of the mob.

The founding fathers were against democracy, because they knew it led to the end of freedom and liberty.

 

[michael94]

Democracy is the worst form of government. The reason they teach it is to make it a religion in kids when they are easily molded by government employee teachers.

There is really no advantage to it over the divine right of kings which actually makes more sense than rule of the mob.

The founding fathers were against democracy, because they knew it led to the end of freedom and liberty.

Hoppe I respect more than the other libertarians because he takes his principles to their logical conclusions. Its quite common to associate libertarianism with open borders for example, but Hoppe talks about how immigration and section 8 housing is an example of forced integration.

 

[Fred]

If you support X, and that leads to Y, you support Y or at least find it acceptable price to pay. Not only that, as you can see from the Naked Capitalism link I gave, there is a violent opposition to democratic organisation.

Rothbard and Hoppe are explicitly anti-slavery, which is why you can't find a quote to support your claim, despite 10s of thousands of pages at your disposal. Just admit that you have no idea what you're talking about!
Rothbard and Hoppe advocate for universalizable laws precisely because government laws necessarily create a master class and a slave class. Government can, for example, take your money/property without your consent. But you, as a private individual, would rightly be thrown in jail for doing the same thing. So, clearly the government/citizen relationship is a master/slave relationship in many respects.
And since you completely ignored Rothbard's caveat concerning moral vs. legal obligations concerning child welfare, I can only assume that you are dishonest, or not intellectually up to the task.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Von Mises was against open borders. For similar reasons.

Mises on Nationalism, the Right of Self-Determination, and the Problem of Immigration | Joseph T. Salerno

 

[ecstatichamster]

Von Mises was against open borders. For similar reasons.

Mises on Open Borders | Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

 

[postman]

The US government always favors the rich and large defense companies and banks. That’s not libertarian.

I think many Americans secretly would be happy if porn drugs prostitution etc were legalized.

rothbard showed in Conceived in Liberty how the libertarian impulses were overturned from the getgo in a sort of coup engineered by Hamilton and his allies, against Jefferson’s ideals of very small government, no standing army, and states as countries not as wards of Washington.

Covid-19 is the next step in fascism. by the end of the year we may have mandatory tracking, mandatory vaccinations, digital money and requirement to comply with lots of new laws that kill personal freedom.

Here are some quotes by Thomas Jefferson that illustrates that he wasnt a rothbardian anarchist

“I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.”

“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”

“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state."

He was also in favor of taxpayer funded public schools and public libraries. The federal government purchasing French Louisiana doesn't strike me as an anarcho-capitalist move. Jefferson might have been against a standing army but he was also in favor of having a permanent navy.


Here is another interesting quote by anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard:

"Take Back the Streets: Get Rid of the Bums. Again: unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares? Hopefully, they will disappear, that is, move from the ranks of the petted and cosseted bum class to the ranks of the productive members of society."

 

[Ashoka]

Here are some quotes by Thomas Jefferson that illustrates that he wasnt a rothbardian anarchist

“I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.”

“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”

“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state."

He was also in favor of taxpayer funded public schools and public libraries. The federal government purchasing French Louisiana doesn't strike me as an anarcho-capitalist move. Jefferson might have been against a standing army but he was also in favor of having a permanent navy.


Here is another interesting quote by anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard:

"Take Back the Streets: Get Rid of the Bums. Again: unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares? Hopefully, they will disappear, that is, move from the ranks of the petted and cosseted bum class to the ranks of the productive members of society."

Wow, yes he absolutely sounds like the psychopath type Peat rightly despises. Thank you for identifying this scum.

Democracy is the worst form of government. The reason they teach it is to make it a religion in kids when they are easily molded by government employee teachers.

There is really no advantage to it over the divine right of kings which actually makes more sense than rule of the mob.

The founding fathers were against democracy, because they knew it led to the end of freedom and liberty.

So this is really where you end up with Rothbard and others? Elitist, anti-democratic, apologies for divine right of kings, child markets. Basically anti-Enlightenment ethos, and therefore very much against the spirit of the founding fathers. A pretty picture you guys paint. And you naively insult Peat and act as if his scientific views wouldn’t inform his political ones.

 

[postman]

Democracy is the worst form of government. The reason they teach it is to make it a religion in kids when they are easily molded by government employee teachers.

There is really no advantage to it over the divine right of kings which actually makes more sense than rule of the mob.

The founding fathers were against democracy, because they knew it led to the end of freedom and liberty.

That's another area where you and Rothbard disagree with the great Thomas Jefferson. He was probably the most democratic of the founders and he wanted to let both rich and poor vote, not just land owners.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

Hoppe I respect more than the other libertarians because he takes his principles to their logical conclusions. Its quite common to associate libertarianism with open borders for example, but Hoppe talks about how immigration and section 8 housing is an example of forced integration.

Where does he talk about forced integration?

 

[ecstatichamster]

Rothbard was a pragmatist. He was against war, so he left the right and joined with the left in order to stop the Vietnam war.

He was practical this way.

My suggestion is to listen to one set of his lectures and you will be very, very impressed.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

Wow, yes he absolutely sounds like the psychopath type Peat rightly despises. Thank you for identifying this scum.



So this is really where you end up with Rothbard and others? Elitist, anti-democratic, apologies for divine right of kings, child markets. Basically anti-Enlightenment ethos, and therefore very much against the spirit of the founding fathers. A pretty picture you guys paint. And you naively insult Peat and act as if his scientific views wouldn’t inform his political ones.

Ahaha, wow. Now I know that Ashoka and the Sultan of Portugal are just trolling. They can use epithets, but have no interest in constructing a cohesive argument. All bark, no bite.

The "Enlightenment" has been used to control us. We were given Swedenborg and Newton, not Blake.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Interesting the two areas that have zero progress. Education is the same, and governance is the same, with “the ballot box” replacing the divine right of kings, but it’s basically the same thing, only worse because the actors get into office, milk it for themselves and their friends, and then move on. At least Kings had ownership and it was to their advantage to improve on their assets and not milk it during a limited time in office.

This is basically Hoppe’s thesis in Democracy: The God That Failed

 

[Ashoka]

Ahaha, wow. Now I know that Ashoka and the Sultan of Portugal are just trolling. They can use epithets, but have no interest in constructing a cohesive argument. All bark, no bite.

The "Enlightenment" has been used to control us. We were given Swedenborg and Newton, not Blake.

My original point and why I commented was just that you felt that there was a knee-jerk reaction, but then you practically performed the exact same thing yourself mid-sentence. I was pointing out a moment of hypocrisy.

Then I wanted to make it clear I believe Peat would likely never agree with this man, and that his scientific views influence his political ones. ecstatichamster already stated that in the beginning, but the title of this thread is unfortunate and misleading.

If being the Ray Peat of a certain field simply means having an idiosyncratic manner, some quirky views, and being very intelligent, god help us.

That’s really most of what I cared to say.

Then I was simply taken aback by how bad this guys sounds. I’m sorry but Rothbard does sound like scum to me from what’s been included in this thread already. For example, the separation of families as considered being “good” for the families when it’s actually in the interest of the market. The assault on homeless people by police as the supposed deadbeats of society. This is the thinking of the stupid.

I don’t really know why you would say that about the Enlightenment. The sense was of removing the arbitrary exercise of power (from those who did nothing to earn it other than being born, for example), creating a space for individual freedom, and so on. That impulse is seen through the best representatives of the time. Whether they lived up to this shared ideal perfectly in execution and as individuals is a different question.

 

[kyle]

The US government always favors the rich and large defense companies and banks. That’s not libertarian.

I think many Americans secretly would be happy if porn drugs prostitution etc were legalized.

Sex and drugs are tools of the powerful to cloud people's minds and distract them from how oppressed and broken our society is becoming.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

Rothbard and Hoppe are explicitly anti-slavery, which is why you can't find a quote to support your claim, despite 10s of thousands of pages at your disposal. Just admit that you have no idea what you're talking about!
Rothbard and Hoppe advocate for universalizable laws precisely because government laws necessarily create a master class and a slave class. Government can, for example, take your money/property without your consent. But you, as a private individual, would rightly be thrown in jail for doing the same thing. So, clearly the government/citizen relationship is a master/slave relationship in many respects.
And since you completely ignored Rothbard's caveat concerning moral vs. legal obligations concerning child welfare, I can only assume that you are dishonest, or not intellectually up to the task.

The libertarian US economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) wrote in his book 'Ethics of Liberty', that parents should have the right to put a child out for adoption or sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract. Rothbard suggested selling children as consumer goods in accordance with market forces, would benefit "everyone" involved in the market: "the natural parents, the children, and the foster parents.[32] In Rothbard's view, "the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights." Thus, parents should have the legal right to let any infant die by starvation. However, since "the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children" he wrote, "the existence of a free baby market will bring such 'neglect' down to a minimum".[32]​

Child selling - Wikipedia

The thing about agruing with right libertarians is that half the time they don't know what they are supporting. I posted this reference already, and everyone knows that forcing a five year old to sign a contract on the threat of starvation would be slavery. Of course, that is only in the libertarian utopia, IRL a place run by warlords is likely to have kids enslaved by fiat, without the thin veneer of contracts. Kids can not hire warlords to protect them (and neiter can a regular person, for God's sake).

Here is some more:

A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person… but falls instead into the same moral category as an animal – of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a “free good”) or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest).

On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the [value of the division of labor] but… who knowingly act wrongly… esides having to be tamed or even physically defeated [they] must also be punished… to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully teach them a lesson for the future. [173]
​

nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/journey-libertarian-future-part-vi-certainty.html

 

[Steven Bussinger]

My original point and why I commented was just that you felt that there was a knee-jerk reaction, but then you practically performed the exact same thing yourself mid-sentence. I was pointing out a moment of hypocrisy.

Then I wanted to make it clear I believe Peat would likely never agree with this man, and that his scientific views influence his political ones. ecstatichamster already stated that in the beginning, but the title of this thread is unfortunate and misleading.

If being the Ray Peat of a certain field simply means having an idiosyncratic manner, some quirky views, and being very intelligent, god help us.

That’s really most of what I cared to say.

Then I was simply taken aback by how bad this guys sounds. I’m sorry but Rothbard does sound like scum to me from what’s been included in this thread already. For example, the separation of families as considered being “good” for the families when it’s actually in the interest of the market. The assault on homeless people by police as the supposed deadbeats of society. This is the thinking of the stupid.

I don’t really know why you would say that about the Enlightenment. The sense was of removing the arbitrary exercise of power (from those who did nothing to earn it other than being born, for example), creating a space for individual freedom, and so on. That impulse is seen through the best representatives of the time. Whether they lived up to this shared ideal perfectly in execution and as individuals is a different question.

That's a fair response.

My original point and why I commented was that I found it disturbing that the Sultan wanted to shut down discussion of Rothbard's ideas. I used the rhetorical trope of "knee-jerk response" because it's something you so often hear from neoliberal media. I also considered "dog whistle". It was meant to be satirical.

I'm really not sure how to not do a knee-jerk response... do I wait for some period of time like 3 days or for 3 other posters? What makes a response knee-jerk?

Explaining how the form of Enlightenment that we have been bequeathed is bad is extremely involved. Luckily, I can draw from an essay that should hopefully elucidate my point.

In place of Aristotle, Newton adopted the physics of Descartes, which divided the world into matter, the res extensa, and thought, the res cogitans. The res extensa was all of one piece. The entire physical universe was one fabric or one fluid composed of atoms, and motion occurred when one atom bumped into another and conveyed to that second atom its motion in much the same way that a locomotive conveys motion to a string of boxcars. Leibniz and Huygens were smart enough to realize that in the Cartesian material universe which Newton ostensibly espoused, there was no possibility of action at a distance. And that meant that there could be no such thing as gravity.

White tells us that Leibniz

was suspicious of Newton’s entire concept of gravity, referring to it mockingly as “the rebirth in England of a theology that is more than papist and a philosophy entirely scholastic since Mr. Newton and his partisans have revived the occult qualities of the school with the idea of attraction.” [Gottfried von Leibniz, Die Philosophischen Schriften Vol. 3, pp. 328-9]​

Well, Newton was certainly no papist. Where then did the idea of gravity come from? Leibniz got it right when he claimed that Newton smuggled “gravity” into his system. But he got the source wrong. Leibniz knew there was something “occult” about Newton’s idea of gravity, but he thought the source of Newton’s cosmology was scholasticism, when in reality the source was alchemy. Newton wasn’t a closet scholastic; Newton was an alchemist.
...

Aristotle’s understanding of natural objects was more sophisticated than the views of the atomists. Instead a world made up of little indivisible balls bumping into each other, Aristotle believed that “As forms are to matter, so also is Soul to Body.
...

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is another example of the English Ideology, derived from Newton, which also claims that strife—or as Darwin would say, natural selection—is the fundamental principle of the universe. Darwin, like Newton, “frames no hypotheses.” He looks at nature and discovers that “strife” is its fundamental law.
...

Just as Darwin and Malthus projected the English Capitalism of their day onto the world of biology, so Newton projected the Capitalism of his day onto the universe when he said that its most fundamental principle was inertia or strife.
...

Newton’s cosmology was a rationalization, in just about every sense of the word, of force. Motion was redefined. It no longer bespoke a telos or goal, as it had in the Aristotelian system. Motion was now extrinsic to the bodies in motion, and another world for that extrinsic motion was force. Once Whig magnates digested the lesson of the Principia with the help of propagandists like Locke, they learned that all motion was caused, not by entelechy leading them to their proper end or telos, but by external force, which was in some sense of the word, totally arbitrary and in that sense much like the force (William of Orange) which put James II in motion and drove him from his rightful position (now associated with the outmoded concept of entelechy or telos) on the throne of England. There was no longer any proper end to motion. Every motion was arbitrary and a function of force
...

All of the lessons Newton learned as a child were economic. Newton’s father died when he was a child. When he was three years old his mother married a 63-year-old widower, who was also an Anglican priest, out of purely financial considerations. As part of the prenuptial agreement, Newton’s mother had to agree to leave three-year-old Isaac behind to be raised by his grandparents. The Rev. Smith lived longer than Hannah expected. When she finally moved back to live with Isaac she brought three half-siblings with her. The bond between mother and child was irrevocably broken, and Isaac had been permanently scarred by the experience. The universe was a different place now. It was ruled by unseen forces that moved bodies in inexplicable ways, ways that a child of undeniable genius would attempt to explain in later life.
...

The heart of this economics is the idea of force, which, as Professor Mirowski has explained, is another word for money. Economic force (or money) alone explains the motion of heavenly bodies, like that of his mother. Money is the secret force that determines motion. There is no plenum or fullness to nature. There are only lonely atoms in a void moved by force, which is another word for money. As Westfall tells us, “After deploying the standard arguments against a plenum, Newton opted for atoms,” which is to say, a cosmology based on his life as an abandoned child and a lonely scholar.[27] Like Darwin, Newton projected English capitalism on to the universe. Unlike Darwin, the pampered scion of the English ruling class, Newton projected capitalism as he saw it and lived it, the rejected outcast who was determined to make his way by usury and political patronage. The ultimate source of Newton’s cosmology wasn’t mathematics; it wasn’t disinterested observation eschewing “hypotheses” (“hypothesi not fingo,” was the famous explanation or non-explanation Newton added to the second edition of the Principia); it wasn’t even alchemy, from which he derived the concepts of inertia and gravity. No, the ultimate source of Newton’s cosmology was Capitalism viewed through the lens of his relationship with his mother.​

These are excerpts from an article written by Michael E. Jones, a Catholic scholar. Hopefully the value of his writing is not now nullified by his personal beliefs or associations.

Personally, I think Ray would make similar arguments as the author here. You can see how he analyzes a person's personal ideology and how it influences and permeates through all of their work when he discusses Konrad Lorenz, especially. Though he never discusses personal history much.

My point in providing these excerpts is to show how Newton's system is cold and economical, ruled by force and populated by separate bodies which only interact through force like the cars of a train. Newton is a demi-god in the deterministic, materialistic, hyper-rational scientific system. If there was a Mount Rushmore of this ideology, he would be on it. This is the dominant ideology that Ray and others like Sheldrake argue against, what Jones has termed the English Ideology.

Presumably, you don't care for this view of the universe, either. It is very suitable for the ruling class, since humans are simply automatons with no dignity, natural resources to be utilized. And this is fine, because the universe is arbitrary, there is no telos or end-purpose. It simply exists.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

The libertarian US economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) wrote in his book 'Ethics of Liberty', that parents should have the right to put a child out for adoption or sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract. Rothbard suggested selling children as consumer goods in accordance with market forces, would benefit "everyone" involved in the market: "the natural parents, the children, and the foster parents.[32] In Rothbard's view, "the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights." Thus, parents should have the legal right to let any infant die by starvation. However, since "the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children" he wrote, "the existence of a free baby market will bring such 'neglect' down to a minimum".[32]​

Child selling - Wikipedia

The thing about agruing with right libertarians is that half the time they don't know what they are supporting. I posted this reference already, and everyone knows that forcing a five year old to sign a contract on the threat of starvation would be slavery. Of course, that is only in the libertarian utopia, IRL a place run by warlords is likely to have kids enslaved by fiat, without the thin veneer of contracts. Kids can not hire warlords to protect them (and neiter can a regular person, for God's sake).

Here is some more:

A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person… but falls instead into the same moral category as an animal – of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a “free good”) or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest).

On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the [value of the division of labor] but… who knowingly act wrongly… esides having to be tamed or even physically defeated [they] must also be punished… to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully teach them a lesson for the future. [173]
​

nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/journey-libertarian-future-part-vi-certainty.html

The thing about the libertarian system, and any evaluation of it (including yours), is that there is no consideration of the role of culture and other humanistic elements. Such an act (child selling) most would find morally reprehensible, and they would prevent it if it was in their power. It's funny because you accepted the libertarian frame that humans can become homo economicus and will ignore any sense of what is fair, just, or beautiful. Even Rothbard and other libertarians don't truly believe humans are computing automatons, because they will almost always bring subjective value and personal preference into discussions about markets. Is this inconsistent? Yes.

All ideologies stemming from the stunted version of the Enlightenment incorporated as the English ideology are inconsistent (I talked about the Enlightenment and English Ideology in my response to Ashoka). I term ideologies in this fashion Platonic or Western. These ideologies exist and develop by stealing ideas from thinkers working in the Aristotelian or Eastern fashion, and installing them in their models.

The first episode of the Quax podcast introduced me to the binary of the Rationalists and Empirics. The Rationalists (Platonic, Western) must steal from the Empirics (Aristotelian, Eastern). This is the only way for the Rationalist ideology to survive and and continue, they must feed on the new facts generated by the Empirics. They can't generate their own discoveries, because it would disrupt their models. The models are the authority; anything contradicting the accepted model is expurgated and isn't granted full status as scientific fact. The Rationalist system is actually a dialectic. Each cycle of the dialectic integrates the current model with problematic data, and this yields a synthesis of the new model.

Ray has covered how poorly the prevailing paradigm of "pumps, membranes, and receptors" reflects reality and they've had to retrofit and refine their theses and experimental methods to match. For example:

"After the electron microscope began making pictures of cells, it took some time to find the stain that would produce any membrane at all, and then it took about thirty years to learn to produce a “membrane” image that had a thickness that seemed appropriate for the theory."​

They are constantly bolting on caveats and provisos to the elegant exterior of the current engine of understanding. Until a new paradigm is created, and we get a beautiful new machine to work with.

Perhaps it could be said that the Empirics borrow models from the Rationalists, but I need to explore that idea further.