Interring the Nondelegation Doctrine

The Doctrine of Signatures.

‘The Doctrine of Signatures’ started with the idea that God has marked everything he created with a sign (signature). The sign showed the purpose for the creation of the item. The ‘Doctrine of Signatures’ was promulgated by the writings of Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), a shoemaker in Görlitz, Germany, who had a profound mystical vision in which he saw a relationship between God and man that caused h...

The Real Bills Doctrine

With recession lingering and interest rates remaining high, one hears increasingly that the Fed should abandon its money growth targets and move to a policy of lowering interest rates to full employment levels. All would be well, we are told, if only the Fed would set a fixed low interest rate target consistent with full employment and then let the money stock adjust to money demand to achieve ...

Sharpening the Doctrine of God

The Doctrine of Internal Reasons

According to advocates of internalism about reasons for action, there is an interesting connection between an agent’s reasons and the agent’s present desires. On the simplest version of this view, an agent has a reason to act a certain way at some time if and only if acting that way would promote his present desires. Let us call this the sub-Humean model.1 The sub-Humean model is widely regarde...

The Neuron Doctrine (1860-1895)

The neuron [4] doctrine is a concept formed during the turn of the twentieth century that describes the properties of neurons, the specialized cells that compose the nervous system. The neuron [4] doctrine was one of two major theories on the composition of the nervous system at the time. Advocates of the neuron [4] doctrine claimed that the nervous system was composed of discrete cellular unit...