2,793 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
In this brief reply to Gould, Shackle offers an endorsement rather than a counterargument: he praises Gould’s reasoning and supports the directions of inquiry proposed. Its interest lies in the research priority Shackle states with unusual directness—decision-making as perhaps the richest and most central problem in the human sciences. The note records that commitment and agreement without elaborating a theory or specifying the methods by which inquiry should proceed.
When do long odds make an outcome seem not merely improbable but impossible? In this brief reply to Gould, Shackle acknowledges a difficulty for his account of decision under uncertainty: even someone facing a unique venture may let probabilities shape judgements of what can happen. He welcomes investigation of Gould’s proposed modification while insisting on a prior question—whether the conflicting evidence from which businesspeople form expectations can be expressed as numerical odds at all. The exchange offers a compact view of Shackle responding to criticism without abandoning his central distinction between probability and possibility, and helps readers separate two sources of uncertainty: the rarity of a decision and the difficulty of interpreting its evidence.