RATIONALITY AS PROCESS AND AS PRODUCT OF THOUGHT

The opportunity to deliver the Richard T. Ely Lecture, from which this chapter is derived, afforded me some very personal satisfactions. Ely, unbeknownst to him, bore a great responsibility for my economic education, and even for my choice of profession. The example of my uncle, Harold Merkel, who was a student of Commons and Ely at Wisconsin before World War I, taught me that human behavior was a fit subject for scientific study, and directed me to economics and political science instead of high energy physics or molecular biology. Some would refer to this as satisficing, for I had never heard of high energy physics or molecular biology, and hence was spared an agonizing weighing of alternative utiles. I simply picked the first profession that sounded fascinating.