Epistemological Problems of Economics
This work is not discussed here at length, since it is a compilation of articles, most of which have been separately discussed elsewhere in this bibliography. The work as a whole is important as an early comprehensive statement of Mises's deductivist views on methodology. When this work appeared, he had not yet coined the term "praxeology" for the deductive science of human action, instead referring to it as "sociology" (See the essay "Sociology and History").
At the time Mises wrote, the dominant trend on the Continent favored irrationalist, historicist approaches to economics. Mises strongly opposed this. He discusses at length, e.g., the once influential sociologist Arthur Vierkandt, who ascribed the origins of plowing to a religious ceremony, in which the earth was impregnated. Mises on the contrary believed that the effort to increase material welfare almost always was the dominant motive in the economic system. (He did not, of course, consider this a deductively valid law.) He resorts to the "non-economic" motives he viewed as part of the romantic trend it was one of his main aims to combat.
Ludwig von Mises:
An Annotated Bibliography