The object of the inquiry that these chapters report upon is to identify and clarify the basic concepts and suppositions of the subject field in which the primary practice of economists lies; and it is our belief that we have proceeded in this inquiry along a line of thought of F. H. Knight. “It would hardly seem to call for argument,” Knight remarked, “that the methodology of economic theory should be worked out in relation” to the problems that gave rise to it and that sustain an interest in it. “The first fact for emphasis,” he continued, “regarding the relation between economic theory and action … is that the activities for which it … furnish[es] guidance are those of the citizen and statesman, not those of the individual as a wirtschaftender Mensch. Its practical problems are those of social policy. And the first requisite for ‘talking sense’ about social policy is to avoid the nearly universal error of regarding the problem as in any sense closely parallel in form to the scientific-technological problem of using means to realize ends. The social problem, and the only problem which should properly be called social, is that of establishing a social consensus on matters of policy…. The social action which the study of economics has as its function to guide, or at least to illuminate, is essentially that of making ‘rules of the game’ in the shape of law, for economic relationships” (Knight 1956a: 174).