The indisputable facts of experience

‘The propositions of economic theory, like all scientific theory, are obviously deductions from a series of postulates. And the chief of these postulates are all assumptions involving in some way simple and indisputable facts of experience relating to the way in which the scarcity of goods which is the subject-matter of our science actually shows itself in the world of reality. ... These are not postulates the existence of whose counterpart in reality admits of extensive dispute once their nature is fully realised. We do not need controlled experiments to establish their validity: they are so much the stuff of our everyday experience that they have only to be stated to be recognised as obvious’ (Nature and Significance of Economic Science, second edition, pp. 78-79).

From the abstract of "Can Economics be founded on 'indisputable facts of experience'?", a paper that Robert Sugden will give probably gave to the STICERD conference on Lionel Robbins.