I think of facts as historical events. They cannot change. We just get more of them, and sometimes the more recent ones are more relevant to the near future.
Keynes notion of facts changing strikes me as creepy, with a hint of Orwell’s Minitrue employing Winston Smith to change them.
Keynes seems to be peddling a vision in which intellectual progress in not cumulative. Facts are established. Theory accounts for them. Facts change. Theory must also be changed. It leaves open the possibility that facts may change again or even change back!
“When the facts change” must be read as short hand for “When new facts come along that falsify the old theory, the one that did an apparently adequate job on the old facts...”. There is an important distinction but it is not between those who change their minds and those who do not. Age and generational forgetting will take care of those who refuse to change. In the fullness of time a new generation will believe in the new facts and the new theories; change is inevitable.
The big distinction is between folk-wisdom, which is content to have the new theory explain the new facts, and science, which holds itself to a higher standard. Science expects the new theory to explain the new facts and the old facts. That tends to be socially awkward, because progress, if it is permitted at all, tends to bring out the ways in which the old facts got bent to better fit the old theories.
John Maynard Keynes
I think of facts as historical events. They cannot change. We just get more of them, and sometimes the more recent ones are more relevant to the near future.
Keynes notion of facts changing strikes me as creepy, with a hint of Orwell’s Minitrue employing Winston Smith to change them.
Keynes seems to be peddling a vision in which intellectual progress in not cumulative. Facts are established. Theory accounts for them. Facts change. Theory must also be changed. It leaves open the possibility that facts may change again or even change back!
“When the facts change” must be read as short hand for “When new facts come along that falsify the old theory, the one that did an apparently adequate job on the old facts...”. There is an important distinction but it is not between those who change their minds and those who do not. Age and generational forgetting will take care of those who refuse to change. In the fullness of time a new generation will believe in the new facts and the new theories; change is inevitable.
The big distinction is between folk-wisdom, which is content to have the new theory explain the new facts, and science, which holds itself to a higher standard. Science expects the new theory to explain the new facts and the old facts. That tends to be socially awkward, because progress, if it is permitted at all, tends to bring out the ways in which the old facts got bent to better fit the old theories.
It is doubtful this quote is authentic. See here.