A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell
A timeless book that considers two different kinds of visions: the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. Sowell describes a vision as a sense of how the world works — more general than a theory but something that can influence the particular theories one comes up with and chooses to believe. The unconstrained vision, according to Sowell, focuses on dispositions while the constrained vision focuses on constraints and incentives. Sowell tries to fairly present both sides but his own personal bias in favor of the constrained vision is evident.
Reviews/mentions: Viktor Vanberg in Cato Journal (PDF), Bryan Caplan on his personal webpage.
[...] view of systemic processes and knowledge, as described in his books Knowledge and Decisions and Conflict of Visions. In the latter book, he writes (pages 41-42): Also implicit in the unconstrained vision is the view [...]
Pingback by Two decent arguments for religion « Thinking Beyond Competition — August 23, 2010 @ 1:33 am
[...] the book Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell outlines two different kinds of visions — a “constrained vision” [...]
Pingback by The libertarian vision and my biases « Thinking Beyond Competition — December 22, 2010 @ 3:50 am